| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
cspan.org. | |
| Tonight on C-SPAN's Q&A, White House Trade Advisor Peter Navarro went to prison in 2024, convicted of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the January 6th Committee after being found guilty on two counts. | ||
| In his new book, I Went to Prison So You Won't Have To, Peter Navarro lays out the Justice Department's case, his arrest and trial, and what it was like for him behind bars. | ||
| People think you're in a dorm rather than a cell. | ||
| It's like everybody told me there that they'd rather be in a cell because you only have to worry about one other guy. | ||
| You know, there's a thing called the lock, lock in the sock, right? | ||
| You take a padlock, you throw it in a sock, and a lot of rough justice goes on like that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
White House trade advisor and author Peter Navarro tonight at 8 Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. You can listen to Q&A wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app. | |
| C-SPAN, democracy unfiltered. | ||
| We're funded by these television companies and more, including Sparklight. | ||
| What is great internet? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Is it strong? | |
| Is it fast? | ||
| Is it reliable? | ||
| At Sparklight, we know connection goes way beyond technology. | ||
| From Monday morning meetings to Friday nights with friends and everything in between. | ||
| That the best connections are always there, right when you need them. | ||
| So how do you know it's great internet? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because it works. | |
| We're Sparklight, and we're always working for you. | ||
| Sparklight supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy. | ||
| Of the comments that led to Kimmel's suspension, let's look at coverage from The Guardian. | ||
| What did Jimmy Kimmel say about Charlie Kirk's killing? | ||
| In his Monday evening monologue, Kimmel suggested Trump's MAGA allies wanted to exploit the killing. | ||
| When announcing that it would pull Jimmy Kimmel's program, the TV station operator Nextstar Media Group called comments the comedian had made about the far-right activist Charlie Kirk's death offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our nation's political discourse. | ||
| Supporters of Donald Trump have praised the decision, and the White House Deputy Chief of Staff called it an example of quote consequence culture. | ||
| However, anti-Trump politicians as well as media figures and free speech organizations have warned that it is part of an effort to systemically silence Trump's critics. | ||
| But what did Kimmel actually say to raise the ire of the MAGA Make America Great Again movement? | ||
| Well, let's have a look at some of his comments on the shooting of Charlie Kirk on his program on Monday. | ||
| We had some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it. | ||
| In between the finger pointing, there was grieving. | ||
| On Friday, the White House flew the flags at half-staff, which got some criticism. | ||
| But on a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this. | ||
| My condulations on the loss of your friend Charlie Kirk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
May I ask, sir, personally, how are you holding up over the last day and a half, sir? | |
| I think very good. | ||
| And by the way, right there, you see all the trucks? | ||
| They just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House, which is something they've been trying to get, as you know, for about 150 years. | ||
| And it's going to be a beauty. | ||
| Yes, he's at the fourth stage of grief, construction. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Demolition, construction. | |
| This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend. | ||
| This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish, okay? | ||
| Now, in response to Kimmel's suspension, President Trump posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, great news for America. | ||
| The ratings challenge Jimmy Kimmel show is canceled. | ||
| He's actually suspended. | ||
| Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done. | ||
| Kimmel has zero talent and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that's possible. | ||
| That leaves Jimmy and Seth two total losers on Fake News NBC. | ||
| Their ratings are also horrible. | ||
| Do it, NBC. | ||
| On Air Force One on Thursday, as the president was traveling back from the United Kingdom, he spoke about this issue and suggested that networks should lose their broadcast licenses if they are critical of him. | ||
| Let's listen. | ||
| You know, when a late night host is on network television, there is a licensing. | ||
| I'll give you an example. | ||
| I read someplace that the networks were 97% against me. | ||
| I get 97% negative. | ||
| And yet I won it easily. | ||
| I won all seven swing states popular, but won everything. | ||
| And if they're 97% against, they give you only bad publicity or the press. | ||
| I mean, they're getting a license. | ||
| I would think maybe their license should be taken away. | ||
| It would be up to Brendan Carr. | ||
| I think Brendan Carr is outstanding. | ||
| He's a patriot. | ||
| He loves our country and he's a tough guy. | ||
| When you have a network and you have evening shows, and all they do is hit Trump. | ||
| That's all they do. | ||
| If you go back, I guess they haven't had a conservative one in years or something, somebody said. | ||
| But when you go back and take a look, all they do is hit Trump. | ||
| They're licensed. | ||
| They're not allowed to do that. | ||
| They're an arm of the Democrat Party. | ||
| Thank you, everybody. | ||
| We'll hear more from President Trump later today when he is scheduled to speak at Charlie Kirk's Memorial Service in Arizona. | ||
| Here's coverage of that from Fox News. | ||
| The Charlie Kirk Memorial in Arizona is expected to draw 100,000 with Trump and Vance headlining. | ||
| Police are expecting around 100,000 people to attend Charlie Kirk's memorial service at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. | ||
| We will have coverage of that memorial service here on C-SPAN starting at 2 p.m. Eastern. | ||
| It will be live, and we'll have it on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, and c-span.org. | ||
| Let's get to your calls. | ||
| Our question again this morning: Are you concerned about the state of free speech in America? | ||
| Jeffrey is in Greensboro, North Carolina. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Jeffrey. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Thank you for taking a call. | ||
| Can you hear me, please? | ||
| Yes, but your line is a bit staticky. | ||
| Your line is a bit static. | ||
| And we're hearing an idea. | ||
| I'm sorry, I'm going to have to go to Benny in Louisville, Kentucky on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Benny. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| And yes, I'm very concerned about what's going on in this day and age with Trump being president and chilling. | ||
| I think that's what they call it, free speech. | ||
| People are scared to speak. | ||
| They don't know if they're going to be locked up or, you know, lose their jobs. | ||
| It's very scary. | ||
| And I just think I don't understand how more people don't have Trump derangement syndrome, dealing with listening to what he spews and how he's running this country. | ||
| So that's my thoughts. | ||
| Next up is Marie in Baltimore, Maryland, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Marie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| This is the craziest stuff going on in this country. | ||
| It looks like now black people have never to me come from under slavery. | ||
| Well, now it looks like Donald Trump. | ||
| And this administration is making white people sleep. | ||
| A lot of things that you're not going to be interested in. | ||
| But as far as that, Jimmy Kimmel being fired, anybody in their right mind tell me why newscasters ride killed me can sit on nationwide TV. | ||
| People around the world heard what he said to kill homeless people. | ||
| So that means the little children, the veterans, those mothers, the fathers, somebody, they're all somebody's children. | ||
| That to me was one of the most hateful things I have ever heard anybody say I was about to kill people's children. | ||
| And to hear Stephen Miller to say he only wants 100 million people only in the United States, okay, 200,000. | ||
| What do you think they're going to do with you? | ||
| So the comment that you're referring to about killing homeless people came from a Fox News host who later apologized for suggesting lethal injections for mentally ill homeless people. | ||
| This is coverage of this story in the New York Times. | ||
| Just Kill'em, Brian Kilmead, said on Fox and Friends during a discussion about a deadly stabbing in North Carolina in which a homeless man was charged. | ||
| And Brian Kilmead, a longtime host on Fox News, apologized for those comments he made on the broadcast in which he proposed killing mentally ill homeless people by involuntary lethal injection. | ||
| He said, I wrongfully said they should get lethal injections. | ||
| I apologize for that extremely callous remark. | ||
| Next up is Heather in Minneapolis, Minnesota on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Heather. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I just would like to express my concern about Trump attempting to declare Antifa as a terrorist organization because it's not actually an organization. | ||
| Antifa simply means against fascism. | ||
| That's all it is. | ||
| It's just the ideology of that. | ||
| So the fact that he's trying to outlaw Antifa means that he is trying to oppose anyone who does not agree with fascism. | ||
| And I think that's a big problem. | ||
| And I feel like a lot of people, such as myself who are more progressive, it's like we are breaking the law just for expressing our own beliefs and are and which are all we're doing is just expressing our beliefs. | ||
| We're not doing anything violent or any kind of like domestic terrorism or anything like that. | ||
| But he's just this is the very definition of fascism. | ||
| And I'm really shocked at how many people in this country are apparently okay with this. | ||
| So for a bit more information about what Heather is referencing there, there's a story in PolitiFact. | ||
| President Donald Trump said in a September 17th True Social Post, he will designate Antifa as a terrorist organization, but legal experts said he lacks the authority. | ||
| National security experts said the State Department has authority to designate foreign terrorist groups, but it has no legal authority to designate domestic terrorist groups. | ||
| Antifa is a broad, loosely affiliated coalition of left-wing activists. | ||
| And while it's widely considered a political movement, Antifa is not an organization with an official membership leader or base for operations. | ||
| Our question again, are you concerned about the state of free speech in the United States? | ||
| Billy is an Augusta Maine on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Billy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Let's say for casual disagreement that Trump is wrong about the news media, the major news media, NBC, CBCNN. | ||
| Let's say that he's a little off on that, and it's not 97% negative. | ||
| It's 90% negative. | ||
| Now, if you get up every morning for the last nine years and they've done that to a relative of yours, let's say your mother or your father, and every day you heard negative news in the morning about your parents, negative news in the afternoon, and negative news at night, and then get right up in the morning and you hear it again. | ||
| Now, how can they say they're fair and balanced? | ||
| And obviously, they're not. | ||
| Problem is, what I see is there's bad money, evil money in America, and that money is going to destroy our country. | ||
| And then them dollars are put into these networks that are supposed to be fair and balanced. | ||
| But obviously, at 90%, it's totally ridiculous to think they're fair and balanced. | ||
| So go, go, go, Newsmax. | ||
| They're the true people. | ||
| Those news organizations that you think are saying all these things against the president, what do you think should happen in regards to the president saying that maybe their licenses should be pulled? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think seriously, some people on the other side of the coin, on the left, they are starting to see with their own mind. | |
| It's taken nine years because some will never. | ||
| They'll never agree that the news media is against Donald Trump. | ||
| But I think some of them are coming around, and I think hopefully they'll vote, and we can start to get swinging the pendulum the other way because it's just gone all against Trump. | ||
| Everything Trump says is bad, is evil, and that just ain't right. | ||
| We can see the good things that's going on in this country, attacking crime and getting us $17 trillion and investment. | ||
| Do you think their licenses should be pulled? | ||
| Their broadcasting licenses? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know what the answer is as far as that goes. | |
| I think that they need to be smacked upside the head a little bit. | ||
| Maybe if they got some kind of penalty for staying fake news every day, negative, negative, negative, maybe they need to be disciplined somehow. | ||
| I don't know how, but they need to be disciplined. | ||
| They need to be fair. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Ben is in Owings Mills, Maryland, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Ben. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Kimberly. | |
| You do an excellent job, by the way. | ||
| This is a very dangerous place this country is in right now when it comes to free speech. | ||
| And I'm really shocked at how many people are accepting these things. | ||
| Now, that clip you played when the president issues veiled threats to anyone who disagrees with his politics to review their licensing, their ability to broadcast. | ||
| I mean, I don't know if it gets more dangerous than that. | ||
| I mean, like, these are institutions who represent the people in terms of their access to, you know, politics and what goes on in this country. | ||
| And the sad part is no one, people are not really standing up to this. | ||
| So what's next? | ||
| I mean, will people be knocking on your door if you say something that the president or whoever the prevailing political parties in power that they don't appreciate? | ||
| Will you get a knock at the door? | ||
| You know, will you get sent to some prison somewhere? | ||
| I mean, like, that's where it's going. | ||
| I know that sounds far-fetched, but we're like in the first stage of that kind of situation as far as I'm concerned. | ||
| Jamie Raskin, who's a Democratic member of Congress and also a constitutional scholar, was on MSNBC on Wednesday reacting to Kimmel's suspension. | ||
| And here are some of the comments that he made about this. | ||
| We're moving into a time of really monarchical style government where if the president slash king believes that you've somehow offended him, you've libeled him, you've engaged in what the Brits called the crime of les mages stay, you've offended the crown and therefore you've insulted God, then you've got to pay them off in order to get back into the good graces of the government. | ||
| It's just an outrage what's taking place. | ||
| He has sued the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC on just trifles and insults, just total sham causes of action, and yet he sued them for tens of billions of dollars if you add them all up, and he's shaking them down for millions of dollars using his control over the FCC and their control over all their broadcast licenses and different things that they want to do. | ||
| You're a former constitutional law professor. | ||
| the Constitution matters a lot to you. | ||
| Do you think that the do you feel like the masses of the American public who have busy lives are getting just how off the rails we are on this front? | ||
| Well, everybody's finding out in their own way. | ||
| I mean, people who work at law firms have found out. | ||
| People work in colleges and universities, people in the National Guard, people in the counties, the states, the cities, people who watch TV. | ||
| I mean, these late night talk show hosts are like modern political pamphleteers. | ||
| And they're funny and they give people a sense of hope and lightness. | ||
| And that's why Donald Trump has had to use his leverage over people's broadcast licenses in order to get rid of these people. | ||
| And you've got the chairman of the FCC running around, basically like the president's enforcer, to shut down the late night talk show hosts who are like modern Tom Paynes. | ||
| Our question again this morning, are you concerned about the state of free speech in the United States? | ||
| Some comments that we've received online through text, Mary Sheffield in Lake, Ohio says, I'm absolutely livid. | ||
| Excuse me, Mary in Sheffield Lake, Ohio says, I'm absolutely livid how this administration has attacked free speech and just about every other freedom the Constitution gives us. | ||
| Censorship is rapidly becoming the norm. | ||
| Fight for us, Congress. | ||
| Barb in Long Grove, Illinois says, I am very concerned about the state of free speech in the U.S. at this time. | ||
| FCC and the Trump administration tactics and views have become repressive and will not only affect talk shows, but all media if continued. | ||
| And then Donnie in Louisville, Kentucky says, Mr. Kimmel was offered a chance to apologize, but he said no. | ||
| That's why he was suspended. | ||
| It was his choice. | ||
| The president had nothing to do with it. | ||
| It was up to the owners of the network. | ||
| Barbara is in Rossville, Georgia on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Barbara. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is what I've got to say about it. | |
| I think somebody should sue Trump. | ||
| He gets on the air and he says the F word and he can say, beat the HELL out of them. | ||
| And I think one of the networks should turn around and sue him for his dirty mouth. | ||
| And I also think that ever since he's been in office, he has been trying to take away the things that we have, our freedom of speech and other things. | ||
| And I don't think, I don't agree with him about the mistreating of Mexicans or anybody else. | ||
| I think he should have did that in a different way and not been so cruel about breaking families up. | ||
| And I just disagree with him altogether. | ||
| I can't believe this man is so low, low class. | ||
| And being our president, I can't believe the Republicans actually voted this man in. | ||
| It just surprises me. | ||
| I'm just upset over it. | ||
| I appreciate you for letting me speak. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Tom is in Munising, Michigan on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Tom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I was just wondering, I have a question. | |
| How come this concern about the state of free speech in the U.S. comes up now, but it never came up with the Democrat Party when Biden put people in prison. | ||
| And Jimmy Roskin and all those laps, yet you never see him go on. | ||
| Can you turn down the volume on your TV, Tom, and then continue your comment? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You never see any of the Democrats go on Newsmax. | |
| You never see him go on Fox News and spill his life. | ||
| And I got kicked off of Facebook hundreds of times when Biden was in office. | ||
| And I think it's a joke that you put this concerned about the state of free speech now, but you didn't do it when Mr. Reindead was in there. | ||
| We also have a comment on social media from Louisa who says, Jimmy Kimmel is not a martyr, you disgusting people. | ||
| His firing is not equal to the political assassination of Charlie Kirk. | ||
| Charlie Kirk can never speak again because of propaganda's left-wing assassin executed him. | ||
| Democrats are the most disgusting people on the planet. | ||
| David is in Chadburn, North Carolina on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Kimberly. | |
| I remember just a couple years ago or so, there was a group of people at an abortion clinic, and they were praying, and they were arrested for praying in front of that abortion clinic. | ||
| I consider that free speech. | ||
| I saw where no one came to their defense from the Democratic Party. | ||
| And I'm looking now, and I'm seeing this Jimmy Kimmel thing going on. | ||
| And Jimmy Kimmel, the FCC chair, was looking for a reason to get this guy gone anyway. | ||
| His writings were in the tank. | ||
| And I'll be honest with you, I grew up, you know, Johnny Carson, David Letterman, I saw these guys, and that was entertainment because they were down the middle on both sides. | ||
| Reagan, Carter, they all took heat a little bit, but it was not cut to the bone type like Kimmel and Cover and all these other guys are doing. | ||
| And I just, I think that it was a business decision. | ||
| I think they were looking for a reason to get rid of this guy. | ||
| And I think that what we're hearing from the Democratic Party now is, like I said, where were they when these people were arrested for praying in front of the abortion clinic? | ||
| Where's that freedom of speech? | ||
| They're looking for a reason. | ||
| So David, I just want to read to get an update on that story that Trump pardoned those abortion clinic protesters earlier this year. | ||
| This was back in January. | ||
| President Trump issued pardons for nearly two dozen people who were convicted for blocking access to and temporarily shutting down abortion clinics, some of whom were serving federal sentences. | ||
| The president said they should not have been prosecuted. | ||
| Many of them were elderly people. | ||
| Trump said, this is a great honor to sign this. | ||
| So that's, I wasn't sure if you'd had that update. | ||
| But our caller just referenced the Federal Communications Commission. | ||
| And on Thursday on CNBC, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr spoke about the push from local broadcasters that led to the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I had asked earlier about Fallon and Seth Myers, but is the president's view that they should also be taken off the air shared by the FCC? | |
| Well, I don't speak for the president, so obviously, you know, he speaks for himself on that. | ||
| Our goal and our obligation here is to make sure that broadcasters are serving the public interest. | ||
| And if there's local TV stations that don't think that running that programming does it, then they have every right under the law and their contracts to preempt it. | ||
| And we'll see how this plays out. | ||
| But I do think that, again, we are in the midst of a massive shift in dynamics in the media ecosystem for lots of reasons. | ||
| Again, including the permission structure that President Trump's election has provided. | ||
| And I would simply say we're not done yet with seeing the consequences of that shift. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, what does that mean when you say you're not done yet then? | |
| I mean, will you only be pleased when none of these comedians have a show on broadcast television? | ||
| No, again, it's not about any particular show or any particular person. | ||
| It's just we're in the midst of a very disruptive moment right now. | ||
| And I just frankly expect that we're going to continue to see changes in the media ecosystem. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Chair Carr, I'm not sure I wanted to do this or not, but should the government have someone who reviews the writers before the host says them? | |
| No. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How would you be sure that the host is saying something that you would think is okay? | |
| That's not my, it's not up to me. | ||
| The way this works is that the local broadcast station is supposed to be responsible for the content. | ||
| So the check on that content is not the government. | ||
| It's not me here at the FCC. | ||
| It's your local TV station in Provo, Utah. | ||
| It's your local TV station in Scranton. | ||
| It's on them, under the law. | ||
| They're responsible for the content. | ||
| They're responsible for judging whether they think it's in the public interest or serves the needs of their local communities. | ||
| Not for me to decide, but I'm very pleased that they feel empowered to stand up to Disney and Comcast in the appropriate cases. | ||
| Back to your calls about how much you might be concerned about the state of free speech in the U.S. Vera is in Mississippi on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Vera. | ||
| Vera, go ahead, but make sure to turn down the volume on your TV, please. | ||
| All right, let's hear from Andrea in Wakefield, Michigan on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Andrea. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Are you concerned about the state of free speech in the U.S.? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, absolutely. | |
| My husband is a veteran. | ||
| He's foreign oath to the Constitution. | ||
| So he claims that, I mean, he's adamant that he fought for people who even if they don't agree with his views, that they should be able to speak their mind about what they feel is right, you know, whether he agrees with them or not. | ||
| And I believe that, you know, taking comedians off the air, calling for comedians to be off the air because they don't agree with the president or they may have different views than the president is just simply wrong and is a violation of our First Amendment. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Leanne is in Idyllwild, Michigan on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Leanne. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I wanted to address the Republican caller a couple of calls ago when he said, how would you feel about your relatives if they were saying something negative? | ||
| But if your relative is doing something negative every day, then people like you and the other newscasters, what are they supposed to report? | ||
| You called those insurrectionists patriots. | ||
| That's not true. | ||
| There wasn't patriots. | ||
| So what are we supposed to report? | ||
| You said to get rid of the NFL players who took a knee and all they did was just simple protest. | ||
| You called them names. | ||
| So when he's doing something negative every day, not respecting women, don't want to be transparent about the Jeffrey F theme, then what is the news supposed to report? | ||
| They're not reporting anything out the air. | ||
| They are reporting what he's doing daily. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Next up is Kendra in Ashland, Virginia on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Kendra. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Kimberly. | |
| I'm not afraid that there's a problem with freedom of free speech right now. | ||
| And I do not think that licenses should be revoked. | ||
| But I would like to say something else. | ||
| You know, someone called last week, I think, and they had mentioned that they don't think that Washington Journal should divide phone lines by, I guess, like your political affiliation, Republican, Democrat, Independent. | ||
| And I do like that it is divided this way because as a black person, when I first started watching Washington Journal, I was a Democrat. | ||
| But, you know, I feel like because I would listen to other people calling in that were Republicans or Independents, I feel like my views expanded and I'm more of an independent now because I can see, you know, when people call in, I can agree on both sides of, you know, some things that they're talking about. | ||
| Also, I'd like to say happy 10th anniversary to someone. | ||
| He's the most talked about person in the U.S. every day, president, actually. | ||
| He's been talked about every day now for 10 years. | ||
| So happy anniversary, 10 years, Donald Trump. | ||
| And I think that's all I have to say for now. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Another comment we received via text message from Daniel in Springfield, Illinois, who says, rather than cancel liberal comics, conservatives need to get their own pithy comedians. | ||
| Fight satire with satire. | ||
| Hendrina is in Milltown, New Jersey on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Hendrina. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| I am very concerned about the state of free speech in the United States and around the world. | ||
| I think that in fact a lot of your viewers need to read Animal Farm in 1984 and Handmaiden and see that in fact we are heading straight for a totalitarian state. | ||
| We're losing our rights each and every day. | ||
| Donald Trump is a, I don't even want to put a name to it, but he is a horror. | ||
| And he has no compassion, no feeling, nothing. | ||
| And if in fact conservatives and go along with what he's doing, which they are, you know, we are headed straight down the toilet. | ||
| His gold toilet. | ||
| That's all I have to say. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| President Trump's Attorney General, Pam Bondi, made a comment related to speech on the Katie Miller podcast back on last Monday. | ||
| Let's listen. | ||
| There's free speech and then there's hate speech. | ||
| And there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie in our society. | ||
| Do you see more law enforcement going after these groups who are using hate speech and putting cuffs on people so we show them that some action is better than no action? | ||
| We will absolutely target you, go after you if you are targeting anyone with hate speech, anything. | ||
| And that's across the aisle. | ||
| I mean, look what happened. | ||
| Think about Josh Shapiro. | ||
| What happened to Governor Shapiro? | ||
| I talked to Josh multiple times. | ||
| Democrat governor, Jewish, they firebombed his house while his wife and children were sleeping upstairs. | ||
| It's a miracle. | ||
| Nothing worse happened to, it's a miracle that nothing happened to Josh and he and his family are safe. | ||
| They're traumatized, but that's what's happened in this world. | ||
| And we are going to fight every step of the way to show that you will face the most severe consequences if you come after someone and you target someone for their political views or for any reason at all. | ||
| Now, Bondi later clarified those comments. | ||
| Here's a reporting on that in Axios, that she clarified that hate speech won't be prosecuted. | ||
| Attorney General Pam Bondi tells Axios her office is not prosecuting or investigating anyone for alleged hate speech, only for speech that she says unlawfully incites violence. | ||
| Bondi sought to clarify her comments during a Monday podcast in which she said the Justice Department would absolutely target you, go after you if you were targeting anyone with hate speech. | ||
| Her remarks drew criticism from across the political spectrum, including some fellow MAGA Republicans who as a group have historically been sensitive to curbs on free speech. | ||
| But Bondi told Axios in a written statement that she was talking about criminal groups or people that incite violence, not those who say hateful things about the slaying last week of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, a friend of Bondi's. | ||
| Freedom of speech is sacred in our country and we will never impede upon that right, Bondi said in her statement. | ||
| My intention was to speak about threats of violence that individuals incite against others. | ||
| Back to your calls on whether you're concerned about the state of free speech in the U.S. Michael is in New York on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Michael. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Good, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know what? | |
| What I see is a double standard as African American, how Democrats always want to employ that Republicans like me and a lot of other African-American Republicans are a threat to democracy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Camala Harris just came out in her book that she did not appoint Pete Bodachev to be her vice president because he was gay. | |
| You know, where are the Democrats crying about Camilla's hate speech of saying that? | ||
| They're not to be seen. | ||
| You know, they're going around and they're going to shut the government down. | ||
| I want everybody to know Chuck Schumer and the Democrats are going to shut the government down and they're going to use the people in the media to blame Republicans because they have nothing else but to always blame Republicans as being racist, fascist. | ||
| It goes on AOC. | ||
| Where are the Democrats? | ||
| Where are one Democrats saying that ALC and the squad and the things that they've been saying is hate speech, calling all us Republicans, even Barack Obama, telling me, where is this at? | ||
| Where's the hate speech? | ||
| Barack Obama telling this African American here that, brothers, brothers, you should vote for Kamala Harris because he looks at the pigmentation of one's skin, not the contact of one character like Martin Luther King. | ||
| The Democrats have absolutely nothing but this Hollywood act and stuff. | ||
| I always want to blame Republicans. | ||
| And the community. | ||
| For folks who might not be familiar with what you were referencing regarding Kamala Harris and her book, here's some reporting from thehill.com. | ||
| Harris says Buttigeg was her first choice for VP in 2024, but proved too risky. | ||
| And this was in her upcoming book, that former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was her first choice for a running mate in her 2024 presidential run, but that he would have proved too risky. | ||
| This is from the Atlantic's reporting on an excerpt of her book, 107 Days, detailing Harris's assessment that Budigej would have been an ideal partner if I were a straight white man. | ||
| But we were already asking a lot of America to accept a woman, a black woman, a black woman married to a Jewish man, the former vice president wrote. | ||
| Part of me wanted to say, screw it, let's just do it. | ||
| But knowing what was at stake, it was too big of a risk. | ||
| All right, next up is Volcker in Royaltown, Minnesota on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Volcker. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning, Kimberly. | |
| Hey, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, it's maybe borderline of the subject, but to stop the suspensions for public radio and television basically takes away independent information. | ||
| And I think independent information is the key issue to free speech. | ||
| Otherwise, we just go yeah rah rah, whatever we hear, what's convenient. | ||
| Maybe I'm a bit off, but I mean, that's how I feel. | ||
| And I'm really concerned that public radio and public television don't get no support from the government no more. | ||
| That red hurt. | ||
| I mean, I'm a supporter and all that, but yeah, that's my story. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| In regards to some of those cuts, there have already been some closures. | ||
| Here's some reporting in USA Today. | ||
| Central Pennsylvania NPR PBS station among the first to close after cuts to public media. | ||
| WPSU, the Penn State University's NPR and PBS affiliate, announced September 11th it will begin to wind down operations. | ||
| The move comes after Congress approved more than a billion dollars in cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. | ||
| It also comes after Penn State's board declined to approve the sale to another public media station. | ||
| And that is one of several stations that is facing closures. | ||
| More comments that we've received via text. | ||
| Frank in Aberdeen, Maryland says, the first thing Vladimir Putin did when he came in power was to have a popular late-night comedy puppet show canceled. | ||
| Other comedians were harassed and even arrested. | ||
| It didn't take long to stifle any dissent or criticism. | ||
| And then another comment, this one from Bill in Jacksonville, Florida. | ||
| Kimmel's speech is commercial speech versus free speech. | ||
| When commercial speech has no monetary value, it disappears. | ||
| Murray is in Atlanta, Georgia on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Murray. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Hi. | ||
| Good morning, and thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I'm listening. | ||
| I got in late, but I listened to some comments, whatever. | ||
| People don't understand. | ||
| We're not talking about free speech. | ||
| We're talking about murder, okay? | ||
| Not just killing, but deliberate, cold-blooded murder. | ||
| And it shouldn't be celebrated by leftists or anyone else, especially in this country. | ||
| If they are, if people can find, I think they should get a warning the first time. | ||
| The second time they should be arrested and spend the week in jail. | ||
| And if they keep it up, they should add time to it and keep them there. | ||
| Because this is a threat. | ||
| This is a direct threat, not just to our democracy, but to our country and all law-abiding citizens. | ||
| This has to stop as soon as possible, immediately, preferably. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| Just as a reminder, later today, President Trump will be speaking at the memorial service for Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed earlier this month at Utah Valley University. | ||
| From State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona is where the memorial service will be held. | ||
| And you can watch it live here on C-SPAN starting at 2 p.m. Eastern. | ||
| It will also be on C-SPAN now, our free mobile video app, as well as on c-span.org. | ||
| Now let's go to Peter in Chamayo, New Mexico on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Peter. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, thank you for taking my call. | |
| I would just like to say that the only person that lost their free speech was Charlie Kirk. | ||
| Kimball can still go on any show like yours or anybody's show and still talk. | ||
| He hasn't lost his life. | ||
| So it's sad to see that you're comparing Kimball to Kirk. | ||
| It's just not even the same thing at all. | ||
| It's sad to see that you guys are comparing them as equal. | ||
| When did I compare Charlie Kirk's killing to Jimmy Kimmel? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, I'm not talking about you. | |
| Don't take this personal. | ||
| Oh, what did you mean when you said you guys? | ||
| You guys, like CNN, see, I have a TV here, and I have split screens. | ||
| And when I watch CNN, they're making it seem like it's equal what happened to Kimball than it did to Charlie Kirk. | ||
| And it's not even close. | ||
| So it's sick to see that. | ||
| And I just hope someday, you know, you guys will see the light. | ||
| Vice President JD Vance hosted the Charlie Kirk show on Monday and called for consequences for those who have cheered Charlie Kirk's killing. | ||
| Let's listen. | ||
| I'm desperate for our country to be united in condemnation of the actions and the ideas that killed my friend. | ||
| I want it so badly that I will tell you a difficult truth. | ||
| We can only have it with people who acknowledge that political violence is unacceptable and when we work to dismantle the institutions that promote violence and terrorism in our own country. | ||
| Now, our government, you heard me talk to Stephen Miller about this, will be working very hard to do exactly that in the months to come. | ||
| We're not always going to get it right. | ||
| We will sometimes move more slowly than you would like. | ||
| We will sometimes move more slowly than I want us to. | ||
| But I promise you that we will explore every option to bring real unity to our country and stop those who would kill their fellow Americans because they don't like what they say. | ||
| But you have a role too. | ||
| Civil society, Charlie understood this well, is not just something that flows from the government. | ||
| It flows from each and every one of us. | ||
| It flows from all of us. | ||
| So when you see someone celebrating Charlie's murder, call them out in hell. | ||
| Call their employer. | ||
| We don't believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility. | ||
| And there is no civility in the celebration of political assassination. | ||
| Back to your calls on the question of whether you're concerned about the state of free speech in the United States. | ||
| Brenda is in Roundtop New York on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Brenda. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| The reason I watch this show is because I like to find out what my neighbors are thinking. | ||
| And unfortunately, I find that my neighbors, many of them, are just this tribal and busy demonizing people from the other parties. | ||
| Myself, I come from the generation of I want no party. | ||
| I just want peace. | ||
| I just want everyone to be able to think what they want, feel what they want, say what they want, as long as it's not fire in the theater, everybody run. | ||
| And that's the world that I advocate for. | ||
| Unfortunately, what I see right now is the regime, and I will use the word regime, such as been used for countries like North Korea, Russia, and Hungary, and Turkey, that this is really more of a class struggle. | ||
| When you've got 90% of the population making enough money not to be touched or even notice tariffs, you've got, I'm sorry, when you've got 10% of the population not noticing, and then I'm bothering them, and 90% of the population under the thumb of financial strain, it seems to me they're trying to take the power away from people. | ||
| And the way people now, in this moment of free speech being under attack, the way to do it is go around. | ||
| Use your voice. | ||
| Be heard. | ||
| Come, state something disagreeable about the regime in Washington, the current regime in Washington, and let your neighbors hear you and let somebody call the cops. | ||
| You've got to be the example. | ||
| Again, you don't preach violence, but you preach disagreement, and you have to do it publicly. | ||
| You have to dare this regime to come and take a private person away for personal comment out in public, which is what our Constitution is supposed to allow us to do. | ||
| And it's what was done through the entire 20th century, which is where I get my lead from. | ||
| I grew up in a time of great freedom of expression, and I will not bend my knee or my tongue and what I've got to say against my right for freedom of expression. | ||
| And to my last days, as I get older, that's what I am going to do, and that's what I advocate people do. | ||
| Use your voice. | ||
| Let them hear you in the grocery store. | ||
| Say something disagreeable. | ||
| Let someone come send someone knocking at your door because we have to crack that egg open very quickly so we can expose this undermining of our ability to be a free population. | ||
| Mimi is in Pennsylvania on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Mimi. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Regarding free speech, during the Biden administration, there were many people taken off of Facebook, and many lost their jobs. | ||
| I would like you're able to call that up on your system. | ||
| And I would like for you to be fair and call that up and report that during this hour. | ||
| How many people lost their jobs and how many people were taken off of Facebook during the Biden administration regarding free speech? | ||
| And I can call in at a future time and give you all those names. | ||
| I'm very familiar with what you're referencing, Mimi, but I haven't been able to quickly find a story. | ||
| But definitely there were people who were banned from Facebook and other platforms during that period. | ||
| But let's hear from Jamie in Severn, Maryland on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Jamie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I just wanted to say that not only am I concerned about free speech being under attack, but about everything else. | |
| The current government, I don't know if we've ever had a government like this. | ||
| I mean, you know, everything that they don't like, they find a way to cancel it. | ||
| And that's not how our laws work. | ||
| You know, you can be against something, but you still got to live with it here. | ||
| That's what it's always been, you know. | ||
| And furthermore, Charlie Kirk was, they're holding him up like he was an honorable man, like he was something special. | ||
| Like what he spoke was good and created good energy. | ||
| Everything that the man spoke was he was for white nationalist views. | ||
| And that's where he was going around. | ||
| He was a recruiter, basically, for the impressionable children that he spoke to at college campuses. | ||
| So there was nothing honorable about that man. | ||
| You know, I'm sorry for his kids, you know, and it's still a sad thing of what happened to him. | ||
| But it's not like Dr. King, you know, even when they use the word assassinated, I'm like, he wasn't assassinated. | ||
| The man was murdered. | ||
| You know, and a lot of that came from the energy that he projected. | ||
| And, you know, what Jimmy Kimmel said, Jimmy Kimmel didn't say anything that was really harsh at all. | ||
| You know, and I mean, I just really don't understand it. | ||
| But I do think that President Trump is a very, very dangerous man. | ||
| Early on, I didn't, early on, I didn't think that he was as racist as he was. | ||
| I thought that he was just more about money and that kind of thing. | ||
| But then, you know, he just took on the views and the movement, whatever it was that gave him momentum, you know, and allowed those things to attach themselves to him. | ||
| But this, I'm like, man, this guy, he may very well be the Antichrist. | ||
| You know, the energy in America is sickening. | ||
| Lorna is in Hampton, Georgia on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Lorna. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Fine, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for making my call. | |
| I am a black woman. | ||
| All day, all night. | ||
| I will be Democrat. | ||
| Nobody can change me. | ||
| And the reason why I'm a Democrat is because they're the ones that agreed to sign the civil rights bill. | ||
| It was in my mother's house in Georgia. | ||
| She was a Freedom Fund director for the NAACP. | ||
| And we had civil rights people coming through our house all day and all night. | ||
| It was a great debate on who they should go with. | ||
| Martin Luther King told them, we're going with whoever is going to sign this civil rights bill. | ||
| Now that's that. | ||
| But let me get to my other part. | ||
| Anybody, anyone sit here and call black women dumb as a rock, they don't know anything. | ||
| They are empty. | ||
| Is that hate speech? | ||
| From your president to your vice president to all the rest of them. | ||
| Let me tell you something. | ||
| We're DEI hires. | ||
| I went to Emory University. | ||
| I went back in the early, late 70s, early 80s. | ||
| And all my white girlfriends, I had to do their assignments because they were out partying with Herschel Walker. | ||
| I am not DEI. | ||
| I am intelligent. | ||
| I maintain a 3.7 the whole while I matriculated through that school. | ||
| So white men, do not call me dumb because I am not dumb as a rock. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Armando is in Hawaii on our line for Republicans. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Armando. | |
| Yes, thank you for taking my call. | ||
| You know, it's not, I'm not concerned about the state of free speech in the U.S. You know, to me, and I just, and I just heard it tonight. | ||
| I mean, what you were talking, as far as what Jimmy Kimmel said about, you know, that Charlie Kirk and how and the comments he made about Trump. | ||
| And, you know, I think that was very disrespectful. | ||
| And, you know, and that's why, you know, there's certain standards. | ||
| And I think that's why he didn't follow the standards of that network, ABC, and that's why they pulled him. | ||
| He's probably going to go back on. | ||
| But as far as free speech and hate speech, you know, that thing going on is still going on. | ||
| And I think a lot of Republicans, like myself, you know, we don't even watch Jimmy Kimmel. | ||
| So, and this is the first time I heard what he said on C-SPAN. | ||
| And wow, I couldn't believe what he said. | ||
| I was just shocked what he said about, you know, Trump and his reaction to, you know, to Charlie Kirk. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Ricky is in Carlsbad, California on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Ricky. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I have served as a general manager of a small ABC affiliate, and I very carefully watched to be sure that any comments made were in line with our United States Constitution. | |
| I have had lots of challenges just watching the president of the United States call Democrats who are not in agreement with him. | ||
| Scum seems to be a hate speech. | ||
| But we and ABC continue to allow him to participate in this kind of language. | ||
| I only believe that if we keep cutting out speeches that are not in agreement with the leaders of the company, we are cutting out our democracy as established by our Constitution. | ||
| And I do not call as a Democrat or as a Republican, but only as someone who cares deeply that my children and grandchildren will live in a country where they may express their views, whether they are pro or gone, but the leadership of the country. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Next up is Brian in LaGrange, Georgia on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Brian. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| For the young lady that called a little bit earlier from Hampton, I want to tell her that that is fantastic, and she sounds absolutely brilliant. | ||
| And I hope that she is celebrated and is rewarded for all of her hard work. | ||
| And for the previous caller from California, she did a wonderful job, I think, of speaking very intelligently and openly from someone who has a political viewpoint or position and recognizing that. | ||
| The First Amendment is about keeping things open and about recognizing that, while somebody can and should be allowed to say something that you do disagree with, and that the government itself should not be censoring speech, that just because we say that you hear things that you don't like, or in fact you hear things that you may hate, does not make that to be hate speech. | ||
| I think that the state of the First Amendment right now in the United States because of shows exactly like this is fantastic. | ||
| I think we're having a very open, very hearty, very robust exchange of ideas and that there are folks out there that are getting to say whatever it is that they want to say and express their views very openly and strongly. | ||
| But I think that everybody must keep in mind that the First Amendment, while it protects your right and your ability to be able to exercise free speech, that the free market economy does not protect you from any kind of repercussions. | ||
| And so if you say things that can be negative that are negatively reflecting upon your employer, then your employer can absolutely take action against you to remove you from your position of employment. | ||
| If you operated your own business and you've said things that people in your community did not like and they found disrespectful, then they won't frequent your business. | ||
| That's the exact same thing. | ||
| So I hope that everybody will continue to call into this show. | ||
| Thank you all very much, C-SPAN, for what you all offer as this wonderful platform for people to get to openly express their viewpoints every morning. | ||
| And I hope that we can all continue to agree to express these wonderful ideas and have this open debate that we have here in the United States. | ||
| Brian referenced the employment consequences for some people who have been making comments about Charlie Kirk. | ||
| There's coverage of this in USA Today. | ||
| Over 100 people have faced consequences for remarks about Charlie Kirk's death. | ||
| A USA Today analysis shows that more than 100 people have faced repercussions for those remarks. | ||
| Finding that the analysis shows at least 50 educators, at least including high school teachers and college professors, have faced investigations or repercussions for their remarks amidst the wave of intense scrutiny of social media channels by Kirk's supporters. | ||
| Lawyers, doctors, and first responders also have been fired, suspended, censured, or are under investigation for their comments, as well as employees of private businesses, journalists, and government employees, the analysis shows. | ||
| Instances have been cited in at least 28 states in the District of Columbia as Kirk's fans and followers have singled out social media posts and pointed them out to employers calling for action to censure the employees. | ||
| The employees have shared thoughts about Kirk, his legacy, and the possible motives of the 22-year-old man charged in his death, Tyler Robinson, who grew up in a conservative Utah family, according to authorities and neighbors, is accused of fatally shooting Kirk during a Utah Valley University appearance. | ||
| Luther is in Georgia on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Luther. | ||
| Can you turn down the volume on your TV, please, Luther? | ||
| Then go ahead with your comments. | ||
| All right, we're going to go to Kathy in Fremont, California on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Kathy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, good morning. | |
| This is a topic that I'm concerned about. | ||
| I work at the county library, and we provide a service for a lot of different diverse groups. | ||
| And we have had quite a bit of training on this. | ||
| A group called PAVE and another one, Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. | ||
| And I noticed my boss is pretty strict about how we address the public. | ||
| And he can come down kind of hard on you. | ||
| And so I do struggle with this a little bit. | ||
| And one of the things I learned is if you pause a minute and think about what you're going to say before you say it, it's helpful. | ||
| But it's not just what we say, it's the people in general in our library and what they do. | ||
| Because if someone continually complains about other people, my boss will try to figure it out. | ||
| And there are times when people get banned from the library because of the way they act and what they say to others. | ||
| So I do think this is an important topic to think about and become educated on. | ||
| And thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Well, thank you for calling in, Kathy, and to everyone else who called in this hour. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Later today, President Trump will speak at a memorial service for conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed earlier this month at Utah Valley University. | |
| From State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, watch live at 2 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, and C-SPAN.org. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington, D.C. to across the country. | ||
| Coming up Monday morning, we'll talk with Young Voices contributor Alex Rosato about Charlie Kirk's influence and impact on young conservatives. | ||
| And then Wall Street Journal White House reporter Meredith McGraw on White House News of the Day. | ||
| And TYT Network founder and CEO Jenk Uger on the political polarization in the United States. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal. | ||
| Join the conversation live at 7 Eastern Monday morning on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| In 1945, the United Nations was founded in the aftermath of World War II. | ||
| C-SPAN marks the 80th anniversary of the UN. | ||
| We'll dig into the C-SPAN archives for historic speeches from U.S. presidents and world leaders delivered at the annual United Nations General Assembly in New York. | ||
| Monday, at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 2, we'll feature Ronald Reagan in 1988 urging the Soviet Union to open up and embrace democratic reforms. | ||
| George H.W. Bush in 1990 declaring a new world order after the fall of the Soviet Union. | ||
| And Bill Clinton in 1995, making the case for U.S. enforcement of the Dayton Peace Agreement in Bosnia. | ||
| Watch the 80th anniversary of the United Nations all next week at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| Middle and high school students join C-SPAN as we celebrate America's 250th anniversary during our 2026 C-SPAN Student Cam Video Documentary Competition. | ||
| This year's theme is Exploring the American Story through the Declaration of Independence. | ||
| We're asking students to create a five to six minute documentary that answers one of two questions. | ||
| What's the Declaration's influence on a key moment from America's 250-year history? | ||
| Or how have its values touched on a contemporary issue that's impacting you or your community? | ||
| We encourage all students to participate, regardless of prior filmmaking experience. | ||
| Consider interviewing topical experts and explore a variety of viewpoints around your chosen issue. | ||
| Students should also include clips of related C-SPAN footage, which are easy to download on our website, studentcam.org. | ||
| C-SPAN Student Cam Competition awards $100,000 in total cash prizes to students and teachers, and $5,000 for the grand prize winner. | ||
| Entries must be received before January 20th, 2026. | ||
| For competition rules, tips, or just how to get started, visit our website at studentcam.org. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| To continue our conversation about free speech and unfortunately political violence in America, we're joined now by Eric Erickson, host of the Eric Erickson Show. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for having me. | |
| You recently had a piece in the Atlanta Journal Constitution and said, Americans must defend our nation's freedoms and reject political violence. | ||
| How should we defend those? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, first of all, not engaging in political violence is probably paramount, but also recognizing people do have the right to free speech in the country. | |
| And I think that I'm pretty much a free speech absolutist, although I've been really repelled these last few weeks by seeing people not just say, for example, terrible things about Charlie Kirk. | ||
| I think that's perfectly permissible, but to take the next step and say he deserved what he got because of things they didn't like about him was kind of where I drew the line on some companies do have policies on social media behaviors and other things, and they're enforcing them. | ||
| I pretty much think you should be able to say anything you want about any other American, short of they should die because of those things. | ||
| And we're in this very weird situation where across the political spectrum, there are people who want to engage in violence against people on the other side of the political spectrum just because they don't know them, they hate them. | ||
| Oftentimes it's things the person hasn't actually said, but someone believed they said. | ||
| And we're just in this very weird time in the country where Americans spend more time hating each other than recognizing there are lots of people abroad who actually are real threats to us instead of each other. | ||
| A memorial service for Charlie Kirk is scheduled for later this afternoon in State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. | ||
| We will be covering that here on C-SPAN Live starting at 2 p.m. Eastern. | ||
| You can watch it here as well as on our mobile video app, C-SPANNow and on c-span.org. | ||
| President Trump, Vice President Vance, many senior officials are going to be there. | ||
| Eric, what messages do you want to hear from these leaders? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, I'll tell you more specifically, what I don't want to hear is rabid partisanship at a funeral. | |
| I'm an evangelical Christian. | ||
| Charlie Kirk was an evangelical Christian. | ||
| Turning moments like this into political rallies of such, I don't think are appropriate for funerals. | ||
| A lot of Republicans for years have seen, for example, the funeral of Paul Wellstone back in the day turning into this very anti-Republican rally that left a bad taste in a lot of Republicans' mouths. | ||
| I hope they don't reciprocate and do something in kind. | ||
| Henry Olson, writing in the Washington Post last week, made that point that there's a way to be respectful to honor Charlie Kirk and have a moment where you rally your side without being a rally to vilify other people. | ||
| I mean, Charlie Kirk was a famous advocate. | ||
| I actually have an excerpt of that article that you're referencing from Henry Olson, where the headline of that piece was, This is the right's moment to forge a super majority. | ||
| And within those comments, he said, Americans across the political spectrum are justifiably sickened by Kirk's killing. | ||
| They accept that sharp speech is part of politics, but they also understand that crossing the line into violent acts invites the end of American democracy. | ||
| They will be looking to Trump for leadership to guide the nation away from this perilous path. | ||
| Kirk's death should not be used to tarnish and debase his life's work. | ||
| Kirk believed that the proper answer to the excesses of the left was free speech and debate. | ||
| Do you think, though, that given what we've heard from President Trump so far and other political leaders on the right, that this is what we're going to hear today? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I have some concerns, to be honest with you. | |
| I do worry that when you get caught up in the moment, and the president, of course, is known on the right as being someone willing to fight the left. | ||
| There are moments for that, perhaps. | ||
| I just don't think a funeral is a moment for that. | ||
| And it's not a place, particularly given the format, the setting, and who it involves, to not say anything. | ||
| But how you say it, measuring your words carefully, I think is important in a moment like this for all sides. | ||
| You host a live three-hour talk show radio that airs on weekdays. | ||
| Can you elaborate on this debate between free speech and hate speech? | ||
| We played earlier in the show, Pam Bondi, saying that they were going to prosecute people engaging in hate speech on a podcast interview. | ||
| She later dialed those comments back. | ||
| Are both of these things constitutionally protected? | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's no such thing as hate speech under American law. | |
| I was a lawyer before I got into talk radio and represented newspapers and broadcast entities in some colleges. | ||
| There's no hate speech under American law. | ||
| There's just free speech. | ||
| You can say whatever you want to say. | ||
| There are certain things that you might say that are libelous, which gives rise to a civil lawsuit from someone you slander, but the government can't prosecute you for things you say that the government doesn't like. | ||
| That's been the bedrock principle of American constitutional jurisprudence for the last 100 years. | ||
| I was actually very encouraged to see so many people on the right from one extreme to the other, from those who support Donald Trump to those who question him, all kind of coming out and laughing at the Attorney General and mocking her for that. | ||
| And seeing people, for example, like Ted Cruz also questioning Brendan Carr at the FCC in his statements about ABC, that if we don't have free speech in this country, we have real problems as a country. | ||
| And to see the party that has questioned Europeans on their lack of free speech suddenly embrace the idea of hate speech is it's not only hypocritical, it's appalling for a party that has wrapped itself around free speech after COVID and what happened to people during COVID who questioned the government's protocols on COVID to suddenly say, well, now there's hate speech and we're going to prosecute you. | ||
| It should be unacceptable to everyone. | ||
| This term hate speech is getting thrown around quite a bit though. | ||
| And on both the right and the left, do you see any differences in how these terms are deployed in these different spaces? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not really. | |
| It's things you say that one side hates. | ||
| That's how they define it. | ||
| On the left, you can say it's racism, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, what have you. | ||
| On the right, it is anti-American. | ||
| It is provoking violence. | ||
| It is, again, I've also seen them define things as misogyny and racism. | ||
| It's what one side hates, they decide that's hate speech. | ||
| And that's not within our constitutional jurisprudence. | ||
| If you don't like it, you don't have to listen to it. | ||
| You mentioned the FCC's actions or comments from the FCC chair Brendan Carr about ABC News and that there may be more coming in regards to the follow-up of the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel. | ||
| President Trump has filed lawsuits against outlets whose coverage he dislikes. | ||
| Where do you think this administration generally stands on free speech in relation to its actions? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've begun to question it. | |
| I think you can't use the government as a tool to censor the other side. | ||
| I think a lot of Republicans look at the Obama and the Biden era and say, well, they did it to us. | ||
| We're going to do it to them. | ||
| I would challenge progressives right now at this moment who are appalled by the actions of the chairman of the FCC to join those of us on the right who have long said these organizations need to be reined in. | ||
| One of my issues that I have right now, I think, with the political left of this is they're seeing the right use government in ways they find abusive towards them. | ||
| And the only way to stop it is to rein in the power of the federal government. | ||
| You can't just say, well, I'm not going to do it when I take power because people say that and then they do it. | ||
| So if you rein in the size and scope of the federal government, so it can't go after broadcast entities or individuals for things you don't like, we're all safe from each other. | ||
| And the only way to de-escalate the political environment we're in right now is to make Washington less important to our lives. | ||
| You mentioned free speech concerns under previous administrations. | ||
| Former President Obama Obama has warned that the Trump administration is taking cancel culture kind of to a new and dangerous level. | ||
| Among the comments he made regarding ABC's suspension of Jimmy Kimmel, he said, after years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators that it doesn't like. | ||
| I wonder if you have a response to that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I do. | |
| I think Republicans are doing it to Democrats because they saw how Barack Obama wielded government regulatory power when he was president. | ||
| Barack Obama doesn't have clean hands here. | ||
| So much of the press, I think, leans to the left and in broadcast media. | ||
| They're much more sympathetic to him and maybe not aware. | ||
| When, for example, the Benghazi attack happened, President Obama vocally pointed to a YouTuber because two minutes of a YouTube video this guy put up on air several months before had aired on Egyptian TV. | ||
| And the Obama administration blamed these two-minute clips for provoking the riots that led to Benghazi. | ||
| And ultimately, that YouTuber was found to be in violation of probation and put in jail for a year. | ||
| Only later did the Obama administration admit that this YouTuber wasn't actually responsible for it. | ||
| There have been a number of situations. | ||
| There are pressures on Fox News and cable companies airing Fox News. | ||
| You can blast President Trump and the Republicans for what they're doing, but Democrats seem to be somewhat oblivious to things they did in office that provoke the right. | ||
| And again, the only way to de-escalate the situation is to stop government from having those powers. | ||
| Does your own radio programs or the stations that broadcast it, you know, you have a license from the FCC or what kind of government oversight do you feel like you currently have? | ||
| And are you concerned about your own show? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, I look at what Democrats for years tried to do with the fairness doctrine and resurrecting the fairness doctrine through tools of regulation, how conservative talk radio stations have been targeted in the past. | |
| And I do get concerned about the level of the environment. | ||
| Will it be safe for a conservative talk radio show to exist if a Democrat comes back? | ||
| What harassment will broadcasters get? | ||
| You have these national broadcasters, some of which want to merge because they don't see the economics of radio going well right now and their regulations on consolidation and ownership rules, some of which seem to be outdated. | ||
| Democrats like those rules because it prevents the consolidation of potentially a massive conservative block of radio. | ||
| Republicans hate them but don't really want to get rid of them. | ||
| The regulatory scope of the FCC that is today still relying on rules that existed from the 1930s that haven't been updated in many ways. | ||
| I do think we need to look at this as a society that do we necessarily need these 1920s and 30s entities using the regulatory powers of that era for the 21st century and the internet? | ||
| We're going to be taking calls with questions for Eric Erickson, host of the Eric Erickson Show. | ||
| Our phone line for Democrats is 202-748-8000. | ||
| For Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| And for Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| Before we go to calls, last week, Senate Democratic Senator Chris Murphy was with fellow Democrats and spoke out against the Trump administration for this targeting of Kimmel, as well as other critics of the administration. | ||
| Let's listen. | ||
| The shooting of Charlie Kirk was a national tragedy. | ||
| It should have been a line in the sand, an opportunity for President Trump to bring this country together to do whatever is necessary to stamp out political violence that's targeted both Republicans and Democrats, political violence that emanates from both right-wing and left-wing radicalization. | ||
| But Trump and his lieutenants are choosing a different path. | ||
| They are choosing to exploit this tragedy to weaponize the federal government to destroy Donald Trump's political opposition. | ||
| They aren't even hiding what they are trying to do. | ||
| President Trump himself has publicly threatened to arrest members of the Soros family simply for funding groups that oppose his agenda. | ||
| Laura Loomer, maybe the most influential outside advisor to the White House, called on Trump to be a dictator and lock up and silence his political enemies. | ||
| And last night, they showed us exactly how serious they are. | ||
| Trump's FCC forced a major network to pull a loud Trump critic, Jimmy Kimmel, off the air, essentially saying that any media actor that doesn't say what Trump wants them to say about Charlie Kirk or Trump's policies is going to be silenced. | ||
| That's censorship. | ||
| That's state speech control. | ||
| That's not America. | ||
| Trump is making it 100% clear that he is going to ramp up his efforts to use the power of the federal government to harass and punish his critics, not because they're supporters of political violence, they are not, but because they have the audacity to openly oppose his policies. | ||
| This is a standard format for every budding despot. | ||
| Despot there in that comment, several other commentators have referred to these moves as authoritarian. | ||
| Here's an article. | ||
| Trump's moves against media outlets mirror authoritarian approaches to silencing dissent since taking office in January. | ||
| This is a story from the Associated Press. | ||
| President Donald Trump has waged an aggressive campaign against the media, unlike any in modern U.S. history, making moves similar to those of authoritarian leaders that he has often praised. | ||
| Eric Erickson, what do you think of these framings of the president's moves as despotic authoritarian? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, the day before Charlie Kirk was assassinated, Chris Murphy gave an interview in which he said that Democrats are at war and they need to get comfortable doing things they would otherwise not be comfortable doing in the past because democracy was at stake. | |
| The next day, Charlie Kirk was assassinated. | ||
| I don't actually think Chris Murphy's words contributed to it, but also Chris Murphy has a habit for years now of using incendiary rhetoric himself to try to provoke people on the left to take actions that he says they need to get comfortable taking. | ||
| Both sides, he mentioned, do these sorts of things, but I think what the Democrats don't like is their obliviousness to the way Republicans perceive they behaved in office. | ||
| And again, maybe they should stop. | ||
| They seem to have this rule that Republicans shouldn't operate the way they've operated. | ||
| Barack Obama sued nuns to try to force them to pay for abortions. | ||
| The Joe Biden team was perfectly happy getting the New York Post censored from social media over the Hunter Biden story. | ||
| A bit more from that article. | ||
| The tactics are similar to those used by leaders in other countries who have chipped away at speech freedoms and independent media while consolidating political power, including Hungarian Minister Victor Orban, a close Trump ally, whose leadership style is revered by many conservatives in the U.S. | ||
| I hear your point about your concerns about free speech under Obama as well as Biden. | ||
| Do you think these moves or even those moves in previous administrations are authoritarian? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think that both sides have embraced somewhat authoritarian tactics, and the saving grace in this country is despite fear-mongering from the left, Donald Trump is term-limited. | |
| He'll be gone January 20th of 2029, and we'll have a midterm election next year, and Democrats can rally their base and try to turn out the vote and see if they can win the election to try to rein it in. | ||
| If the Democrats can't have a big election next year, I think they're going to need to reassess their own messaging as opposed to just screaming that Donald Trump's an authoritarian. | ||
| He was elected with a majority of the vote that was cast, or plurality of the vote that was cast against the Democrats, and they should probably spend more time figuring out why they lost to him instead of trying to scream that he's an authoritarian. | ||
| We have a question from Steve in Tampa, Florida, who asks, does Eric agree with the Amish proverb, quote, when you're looking for something, you find what you want to see, end quote. | ||
| People follow their chosen media who are all influencers to validate their own thoughts and value system rather than search for the truth. | ||
| Do you agree with that, Eric? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, you know, I bring this up on my radio show all the time that when I do show prep now for a three-hour program, I tend to do about four hours of show prep because you got to read everything on all sides. | |
| I do think the right and the left are both committed more to narratives than finding the truth. | ||
| And I say on radio, I'm an evangelical Christian, that Jesus and scripture says he's the truth. | ||
| And if that means truth is objective, it's findable, it's knowable, even if it takes time to try to find it. | ||
| And sometimes it works for the right, sometimes it works for the left. | ||
| But when both sides think they have a monopoly on truth, they have no desire to actually go find the real truth. | ||
| Lewis is in Oxford, Pennsylvania, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Lewis. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for taking the call. | |
| All of this emotional outcry about First Amendment rights and gaslighting is ignoring the fact that ABC is a corporation. | ||
| Jimmy Kimmel was an employee of said corporation and an at-will employee. | ||
| His comments affected many, causing negative responses back to the corporation. | ||
| In addition, from what I can understand, his ratings were falling. | ||
| He was cut loose because he became a liability. | ||
| I worked for a large corporation where my words, even on social media on my own time, were monitored and I could have faced disciplinary action. | ||
| So I'm not here to argue free speech, First Amendment rights, etc. | ||
| The bottom line is he was an employee and he was cut loose because he became a liability. | ||
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| Eric, before you respond to Lewis, I want to play a clip because during a press conference yesterday, House Speaker Mike Johnson commented on something similar on the firings of workers over comments they made about Charlie Kirk. | ||
| Let's listen to this and I'll get you to respond. | ||
| I approached this as a former litigator who defended free speech in the courts for a couple of decades. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We defended religious freedom and speech that some people deemed to be inappropriate. | |
| Look, in America, it's a very important part of our tradition that we do not, this is a conservative principle, and certainly an American principle, we do not censor and silence disfavored viewpoints. | ||
|
unidentified
|
People in America are allowed to say crazy things. | |
| Now that said, if I'm an employer or I'm a government agency and I have someone in my employee who is online celebrating the heinous murder of an innocent person, a young husband and father, I can make the decision that they don't deserve to work for me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They shouldn't represent my company or my agency. | |
| And I have every right to do that, and I think that's appropriate. | ||
| That's not the government censoring speech. | ||
| That's personal behavior and decorum. | ||
| And you have a right to enforce that. | ||
| So I don't think it's a violation of core principles for people to have appropriate measures taken when they act like crazy people online. | ||
| And that's up to the employers and these private businesses and these people who make those decisions. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's not something that Congress is involved in. | |
| But I mean, I think all of that is intellectually consistent and will continue to defend it. | ||
| Eric Erickson, House Speaker Johnson, they're echoing some of the comments that Lewis just made. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And you know, I'm actually really sympathetic to Lewis's position. | |
| Back in the 1980s, there was that famous anti-drug ad on TV that ran on Saturday mornings during cartoons where the dad confronts the son with smoking marijuana and asks who showed him to do this and the kid responds, I learned it by watching you. | ||
| We went through this with the George Floyd era and social media comments from conservatives that cost them their jobs in the George Floyd era. | ||
| Now suddenly conservatives have turned the table on the left. | ||
| Companies do have social media policies. | ||
| And I'm frankly frustrated with Brandon Carr's comments on Jimmy Kimmel because I think to Lewis's point, this was going to happen anyway. | ||
| ABC like CBS wasn't making money in late night. | ||
| The advertisers complained. | ||
| Sinclair and Nextstar together hold the most ABC affiliates and they were going to complain anyway. | ||
| So Brandon Carr muddied the water and gave the left an excuse to say this is government censorship at play here when really there are free market forces at work as well. | ||
| Lupe is in Canoga Park, California on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Lupe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Now I would just like to come back on what they just showed on JV Van where he was speaking about Eric and they're talking about there was no reason for Eric to get killed for what he said. | ||
| He was speaking the truth. | ||
| Christ Jesus spoke the truth and he was crucified. | ||
| Now when you get the president speaking on things as to lying, God hates the lying tongues. | ||
| Dr. Phil was talking to President Trump one day in an interview and he asked him, have you ever asked Christ for forgiveness? | ||
| Trump answered, why should I? | ||
| I've never done anything wrong. | ||
| There's the problem. | ||
| Can I have a comment from the gentleman here today? | ||
| Go ahead, Eric. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, you know, listen, I am an evangelical Christian who didn't back President Trump in 2016 because of statements like that. | |
| He was asked back in 2016 by Frank Luntz on a panel in Iowa. | ||
| He'd never felt the need to repent. | ||
| I've urged those around the president who are ministers to show him the need to repent as a Christian to find salvation. | ||
| And I do think the way out of this, frankly, as someone who's been in seminary and talks about my faith pretty openly, is the country's got to find a higher calling than just raw politics. | ||
| And I frankly think the church in the United States can lead the way in this. | ||
| It's abdicated so much of its responsibility to the government. | ||
| But, you know, Christ said that what are we supposed to do? | ||
| Love God and love our neighbor. | ||
| And a lot of people think you love your neighbor by standing in their yard yelling at them to repent, and that's not actually the way to live our lives. | ||
| We're going to be able to engage in our local communities. | ||
| If we do that lovingly, all of us finding a better way for our local community will all improve the country instead of all of us being in wrapped attention and passion about what's happening in Washington, D.C., when actually it's our local school board and our local city council that affect us way more on a daily life. | ||
| We should be turning our passions there, working in the homeless shelter in the soup kitchen, dealing with the homelessness in our community instead of looking for solutions from Washington where both sides just want power. | ||
| Jimbo in Bakersfield, California, an independent writes via text. | ||
| Is Mr. Erickson comfortable with peaceful protest outside Charlie Kirk's memorial in Glendale, Arizona later on today? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would expect it and think that's part of the American tradition. | |
| I mean, a president dies in this country on either side. | ||
| There are protesters outside their funeral. | ||
| There shouldn't be an exception for anyone here. | ||
| Americans get to protest. | ||
| Richard is in Florida on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Richard. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I was just wondering, you know, all these things about the Democrats and, you know, and the Republicans and nobody gets along. | |
| But for, you know, example, like they could have a, in order to everybody get along, they could have a fundraiser for Gary DeLabat. | ||
| All right. | ||
| There's a different article that you wrote in a piece last week in the Daily Signal, Mr. Erickson, where you said that data consistently shows progressives are the most mentally fragile people in the nation, overwhelmed with despair, and Democrat politicians are grooming that fragility for violence. | ||
| They must stop, or we all may lose control of what comes next. | ||
| First of all, what data are you referring to? | ||
| And secondly, can you expand on those comments? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, there have been a number of studies, and not from conservative groups. | |
| There's been a Harvard study and several other academic studies that the people in the country, since we've come out of COVID, who show the most signs of despair, of depression, of anger about the state of the country tend to be those who aren't in church, tend to be progressive, particularly progressive women followed by progressive men, overwhelmingly white, more so than black and Hispanic communities. | ||
| The people who tend to be happiest about life tend to be married people who go to church regularly, who tend to identify as conservative. | ||
| And when you have a group of people that we have these comments, I was a CNN contributor for a number of years, and there are lots of standalone conversations about violence on the right in this country. | ||
| There are very few conversations in the media that stand alone about violence on the left. | ||
| Typically, those go both sides and blame Donald Trump. | ||
| I do think that Democratic politicians have to be aware of this growing despair on the left from, are we going to lose the climate because of climate change? | ||
| Donald Trump is an authoritarian dictator. | ||
| Those amplify those depressive sentiments among progressives, and I think can be used and harnessed to get people to turn violent. | ||
| Been very worried about strains of violence in this country coming from the left from George or James Hodgkinson and the mass assassination attempt on Republicans to Floyd Lee Corkins, who attempted to murder the employees of the Family Research Council. | ||
| And again, this isn't to say there aren't violent strains on the right. | ||
| It's just in the national press corps, there's a lot of comfort having those standalone conversations and not about the conversations on the left. | ||
| And I do think Democrats need to do this, particularly in light of an article in Axios from July where Democratic members of Congress on background were admitting they're increasingly scared of their base and that some members of the base really do want blood drawn in this fight against Donald Trump. | ||
| Brenda is in Coco, Florida, on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Brenda. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, yes. | |
| I wanted to ask Eric about, I heard there was a law back in, say, the 80s that did demand on our media, which was television, that you show both sides of something. | ||
| You know, I don't know if this was probably only for the news and that under Reagan, this went away. | ||
| It seems that we are so divided nowadays, and we do have so many lies and misinformation. | ||
| And I'll say that, you know, there's spin from both sides, but some things are blatantly false. | ||
| And I think that if you only listen to what your particular side wants you to hear, that you have no idea of truth. | ||
| So I think perhaps we need to go back to that, where you do have to, on news shows, show both sides. | ||
| What does Eric think? | ||
| You know, there were laws. | ||
| One was the fairness doctrine that, for example, as a conservative talk radio show's tie would have to have a progressive counterpart. | ||
| There were also equal time doctors, which in some cases still apply. | ||
| So, for example, during news hours, if a Democrat gets time who's running for office, a Republican needs to get equal time to do those things. | ||
| There are editorial rules in place. | ||
| The problem I have with it is I agree we should show both sides in the news. | ||
| The problem is that, in my experience, oftentimes, a lot of news broadcasts will show both sides, but somewhat selectively choose who is representative of that side, who may not be accurately representing that side. | ||
| And I will say whether it's Fox or whether it's CBS or ABC or CNN, oftentimes the editorial choices made on who do you platform to characterize one side or the other, there's an editorial bias even there. | ||
| So that's why I favor more news outlets, more news coverage to be able to weed that out. | ||
| It's a very hard thing to police, and I don't know that the government should be policing the content of newsrooms to make sure there's fairness. | ||
| I think it should be the obligations of the newsrooms to fairly do that. | ||
| And I do think and have written repeatedly that I think one of the problems we have in the country right now with the antagonism on both sides is bias within the media picking one argument, elevating one side more so than the other. | ||
| And as a result, you've got the country really divided, not really understanding who they're dealing with on the other side anymore. | ||
| Kim is in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Kim. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I've heard a lot of comments this morning about free speech and, you know, how they think that the Trump administration is just going after everyone. | ||
| I don't know if they remember back in 2021, I was actually removed from Twitter only because I didn't say anything violent. | ||
| All I said was I did a hashtag stop the steal because I truly believed that the election was stolen back in 2020. | ||
| And I think that's still going to be proven at some point. | ||
| But I'd like to hear what Eric thinks about that. | ||
| What happened to millions, including our own president of the United States, was shut down on Twitter, Facebook, you name it. | ||
| The other issue was COVID. | ||
| I actually tried to post something on Facebook about a cure, something that would actually solve COVID if you took hydroxychloroquine and a combination of drugs back then. | ||
| That was immediately shut off, and I was banned for like 10 days or something like that on Facebook. | ||
| So I'd like to hear what he thinks about that because they're talking about how Trump is so, you know, hateful and shutting people off and getting people fired. | ||
| I just don't, what happened back then? | ||
| Was he okay with it back then? | ||
| That's my question. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yeah, no, I wasn't. | ||
| I was pretty outspoken about it. | ||
| And I don't think you can look at what's happening today without looking at what happened in 2021 to conservatives at the time. | ||
| I disagree with you on the election. | ||
| I don't think it was stolen, but a lot of my friends do. | ||
| And I don't think anyone should have been censored by social media. | ||
| And we do know now from the discovery process and litigation with those social media companies, the statements from people like Mark Zuckerberg and others, that there was input from the Biden administration on trying to shut down social media accounts of people on the right. | ||
| The social media companies, they did it, but there was jawboning by the government. | ||
| You look at the Chris Carr situation, the Brandon Carr situation. | ||
| What do you mean what do you mean by jawboning? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jawboning is a, I wish there was a better term for it, but it's the government applying pressure to the private sector to get the private sector to act because the government can't act. | |
| And it happens in the economy, with the Federal Reserve. | ||
| It happens with social media companies where the government suggests that, oh, wouldn't it be great if company X, Y, and Z does such a thing or reaching out to them privately and suggesting they do something. | ||
| And a lot of companies, when the government comes calling, they don't take it as a suggestion. | ||
| They take it as a, you must do it, rightly or wrongly. | ||
| And so they do. | ||
| And we absolutely did see a number of people because of pressure from the Biden administration seeing their social media accounts turned off. | ||
| And that has fueled this anger from a number of people that we're seeing now play out with the Charlie Kirk situation. | ||
| I just, I think we as a country need to recognize that, yes, there's misinformation. | ||
| Yes, there's disinformation. | ||
| Both sides do it. | ||
| There's not a monopoly on truth. | ||
| And the best way to overcome this is for more truth. | ||
| Let more people talk instead of restraining who gets to talk. | ||
| Because inevitably, as a conservative, I really do believe that the biases are against me when it comes to corporations and a lot of the government. | ||
| And I would prefer there be no restraints in speech in this country because I think if you start restraining it, inevitably elite institutions have biases towards the left, and that's actually going to target conservatives more than the left, which is why I think there's no such thing as permanence in politics. | ||
| Democrats will eventually get back into power. | ||
| So Republicans should not now be writing checks. | ||
| They're not going to be able to cash in the future. | ||
| David is in Cincinnati, Ohio on our line for independence. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, David. | |
| David, go ahead. | ||
| You're on with Eric Erickson. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, let's hear from Glenn in Pennsylvania on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Glenn. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, C-SPAN. | |
| Good morning, Eric Erickson. | ||
| Hey, I got a question for you. | ||
| Let's go back. | ||
| Glenn, can you just turn down the volume on your TV first and then continue? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, ma'am. | |
| My question for you, Eric, is the Smith-Mund Act. | ||
| Now, from what I understand, I believe it was around 2013. | ||
| It might have been sooner as to where Obama and Biden got their fingers in the Smith-Mund Act and changed it. | ||
| And it was changed as to where propaganda can be spread and lies. | ||
| I am not familiar with that. | ||
| So I just looked up this up because I was curious as well, and I found a story on Pointer, and it says, Trump allies want a Charlie Kirk Act, but the law they cite never held media accountable for lying. | ||
| Supporters urged renaming the Smith-Munt Act after Charlie Kirk and said it punished dishonest news. | ||
| History and experts say that's false. | ||
| And so this is three days after Charlie Kirk was assassinated, President Donald Trump shared a supporter's video pleading with him to reinstate a Cold War-era law she said punished media organizations for spreading falsehoods. | ||
| I'm hoping and praying that you will revisit what Barack Obama and Joe Biden got rid of back in 2013, which is the Smith-Munt Act, the narrator said in a TikTok video. | ||
| The supporter described the law as one that held news corporations accountable for lying to the American people and spreading propaganda instead of truth. | ||
| Okay, and so just skimming ahead here, the Smith-Munt Act was amended, not repealed, and it didn't punish news corporations for their content. | ||
| PolitiFact previously rated false the claim that Obama allowed the media to purposely lie when he signed the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act. | ||
| That bill folded in the Smith-Mund Modernization Act, which was introduced in 2012. | ||
| And claims that the Smith-Munt Act held the media accountable for lying mischaracterized the law, which did not apply to news content by private corporations. | ||
| The act was amended to remove a ban on government-funded broadcasters disseminating their program to American audiences upon requests from media entities and others. | ||
| Sorry, that was long, but I wanted to hear it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would say I'm always, as a conservative, a little skeptical of Pointer and PolitiFact, but I do now. | |
| You reading that reminds me, this was actually about voice of American and American entities abroad, where you can, as a government media outlet, propagandize to the American people, but you can actually, through the voice of America and those around the world, sell the American worldview. | ||
| Now, let's go back, though, to the original concern and point. | ||
| If you reinstated what was characterized as the law, and that wasn't a fair characterization of punishing American media entities for not telling the truth, but if you did that, who's to decide the truth? | ||
| That's the danger here, is the right passes laws that would allow the government to punish press outlets for not telling the truth. | ||
| What then happens to Fox News, Newsmax, OAN, Conservative Talk Radio, when Democrats take back control? | ||
| People are playing such short-term politics right now to try to punish the other side. | ||
| There's no such thing as permanence in politics. | ||
| The Democrats will take back Congress eventually. | ||
| They will take back the White House. | ||
| You don't want to write something, a powerful law that allows them to punish misstatements, and then they get to be the ones to argue something's not true. | ||
| It's a dangerous game. | ||
| Both sides play with each other. | ||
| Megan is in Richmond, Maine, on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Megan. | ||
| Hi. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I apologize. | |
| I've never heard of the Eric Erickson Show. | ||
| Just make sure your media volume is turned down and then go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, sorry. | |
| Okay, sorry about the wait. | ||
| I've never heard of the Eric Erickson show. | ||
| And while I could say more about his comments, I'll just keep it simple and say I felt like he lacked nuance. | ||
| The FCC chair, Brendan Carr, very publicly threatened Kimmel. | ||
| That's why he was taken off the air. | ||
| I think it's a very different statement. | ||
| His job, Himmel's job, is to comment on the public affairs of the day and create satire. | ||
| And his comments were not controversial. | ||
| They were respectful to Kirk's family. | ||
| And I don't think that's the same as somebody who worked like I couldn't make those kinds of comments. | ||
| Where I would be, or I could be fired, but his job is to make those comments. | ||
| I also think I don't recognize the country. | ||
| I'm 47. | ||
| I don't recognize the country that I grew up in. | ||
| I'm genuinely scared of my government, and I can say I've never been before. | ||
| I'm sure there are people in the people in this country who have been scared of the government before, but I've never had to be scared of my government before, and I am now. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| Eric, your response? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, look, I don't think that Jimmy Kimmel's comments on TV last Monday night were respectful at all. | |
| He suggested that the shooter of Charlie Girk's assassin was on the right at a time progressives were trying to build the narrative that it was a right-wing shooter, and it turned out not to be. | ||
| I don't actually think that Brendan Carr was responsible for his removal. | ||
| I think it's an excuse by the left to blame Carr, who should have never said anything. | ||
| I agree with Ted Cruz. | ||
| He shouldn't have. | ||
| And conservatives shouldn't be encouraging the FCC to do this. | ||
| But I think it was a market decision. | ||
| When you look at Stephen Colbert, who had better ratings than Jimmy Kimmel, who CBS News wound down because of costs, Kimmel's show was very expensive. | ||
| They were looking for an excuse, and he walked into giving them an excuse. | ||
| As far as being scared of the country, again, there's no such thing as permanence in politics. | ||
| And if you're scared of the country and you're on the left, I would submit to you that you should join those of us on the right who think government's gotten too big. | ||
| You should want a government that's small enough that you don't have to fear Washington, D.C. | ||
| And I'm kind of noticing that all the people who are very concerned about what they think the FCC did on the left aren't actually calling to rein in the FCC, which suggests to me that they're comfortable with the FCC having that power, just not used against them. | ||
| And I think that both sides should be comfortable reigning in the FCC so it can't be used as a cudgel by either side. | ||
| Well, thank you much for your, thank you very much for your time this morning, Eric Erickson, who is host of the Eric Erickson Show. | ||
| I appreciate your time this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Tonight, on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A, White House trade advisor Peter Navarro went to prison in 2024, convicted of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the January 6th Committee after being found guilty on two counts. | ||
| In his new book, I Went to Prison So You Won't Have To, Peter Navarro lays out the Justice Department's case, his arrest and trial, and what it was like for him behind bars. | ||
| People think you're in a dorm rather than a cell. | ||
| It's like everybody told me there that they'd rather be in a cell because you only have to worry about one other guy. | ||
| You know, there's a thing called the lock, lock in the sock, right? | ||
| You take a padlock, you throw it in a sock, and a lot of rough justice goes on like that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
White House trade advisor and author Peter Navarro tonight at 8 Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. You can listen to Q&A wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app. | |
| This fall, C-SPAN invites you on a powerful journey through the stories that define a nation. | ||
| From the halls of our nation's most iconic libraries comes America's Book Club, a bold, original series where ideas, history, and democracy meet. | ||
| Hosted by renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein, each week features in-depth conversations with the thinkers shaping our national story. | ||
| Among this season's remarkable guests, John Grisham, master storyteller of the American justice system. | ||
| Justice Amy Coney Barrett, exploring the Constitution, the court, and the role of law in American life. | ||
| Famed chef and global relief entrepreneur Jose Andres, reimagining food. | ||
| Henry Louis Gates, chronicler of race, identity, and the American experience. | ||
| The books, the voices, the places that preserve our past and spark the ideas that will shape our future. | ||
| America's Book Club, premiering this fall, Sundays at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| I was initially very skeptical about embarking on a full life biography of anyone, let alone a figure as big as Zbig. | ||
| Edward Luce is talking about President Carter's former national security advisor, Zbignud Brzezinski. | ||
| Mr. Luce is the Financial Times chief commentator and columnist. | ||
| Luce is a native of Sussex, England, and has spent close to 20 years in the United States since the mid-90s. | ||
| He is an Oxford grad. | ||
| Zbignud Brzezinski was born in Warsaw, Poland, got his PhD at Harvard, spent time in Canada during the time his father was posted as Polish Council in Montreal. | ||
| Brzezinski was National Security Advisor from 1977 to 1981. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Author Edward Luce with his book, Zabig, The Life of Zbignud Brzezinski, America's Great Power Prophet. | |
| On this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host Brian Lamb. | ||
| BookNotes Plus is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| So you interviewed the other night. | ||
| I watched it about two o'clock in the morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There was a little thing called C-SPAN, which I don't know how many people were watching. | |
| Don't worry, you were in primetime too, but they happened to have a little rerun. | ||
| Do you really think that we don't remember what just happened last week? | ||
| Thank goodness for C-SPAN, and we all should review the tape. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Everyone wonders when they're watching C-SPAN what the conversations are on the floor. | |
| I'm about to read to you something that was published by C-SPAN. | ||
| There's a lot of things that Congress fights about, that they disagree on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We can all watch that on C-SPAN. | |
| Millions of people across the country tuned in to C-SPAN. | ||
| Thank you! | ||
| Jesus! | ||
| That was a made-for-C-SPAN moment. | ||
| If you watch on C-SPAN, you're going to see me physically across the aisle every day, just trying to build relationships and try to understand their perspective and find common ground. | ||
| And welcome forward to everybody watching at home. | ||
| We know C-SPAN covers this live as well. | ||
| We appreciate that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And one can only hope that he's able to watch C-SPAN on a black and white television set in his prison cell. | |
| This is being carried live by C-SPAN. | ||
| It's being watched not only in this country, but it's being watched around the world right now. | ||
| Mike said before, I happened to listen to him, he was on C-SPAN 1. | ||
| That's a big upgrade, right? | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We're in open forum, ready to take your calls and comments. | ||
| But before we get going, I want to remind folks that later on this afternoon, starting at 2 p.m. Eastern, C-SPAN will be covering live the memorial service for Charlie Kirk. | ||
| This is going to be occurring at the State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. | ||
| President Trump is going to speak at that memorial service for conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed earlier this month at Utah Valley University. | ||
| Again, that will be live at 2 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, as well as online at c-span.org. | ||
| Now we're back in open forum. | ||
| Let's start with Sam in Baltimore, Maryland on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Sam. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, C-SPAN. | |
| I live in Baltimore and I have Hopkins right down the street. | ||
| And during the COVID era, Trump didn't like bad optics. | ||
| So he was saying things, oh, it's a Democratic hoax. | ||
| Oh, it's a flu and stuff. | ||
| And what happened was you had, I think the government was asking the companies when there's false information about vaccinations and that you have to suppress that because it's hurting people if we're trying to get herd immunity and get people to get vaccinated and not take questionable therapies like ivermectin, which is great for malaria, but not, it wasn't good for COVID. | ||
| So people needlessly died for the fact that they didn't get the therapy they should have gotten because they were down their rabbit hole saying, oh, I'm a conservative. | ||
| I don't need to have people telling me, the government, what to do. | ||
| So it's just, I think the government was trying to act in people's best interests. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Next up is David in Spokane, Washington on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Well, first, I just wanted to throw it real quick for C-SPAN. | ||
| There used to be a time, I don't know, a decade ago maybe now, but it's been a while. | ||
| You had like toll-free numbers people could call in from. | ||
| And I actually know quite a few people who don't have easy access to just calling long distance. | ||
| You know, they either have limited minutes on their cell plan or they just have a landline or whatever. | ||
| It'd be nice if C-SPAN would consider that. | ||
| But on the free speech topic, everyone's been talking about, it's a little bit irritating to me always when people will say on the free speech topic, you can't yell fire in a crowded theater, you know, when they're trying to talk about the limits of free speech. | ||
| And I'm sorry to inform people, but you actually can do that. | ||
| And there are a couple of ways you can. | ||
| One, there can actually be a fire in the theater, so obviously you can yell that. | ||
| And the second one is you can be wrong. | ||
| You can be accidentally wrong. | ||
| You can say fire because you sincerely believe there may be a fire. | ||
| You might have smelled something. | ||
| Maybe someone had some kind of those fake cigarette things. | ||
| You saw some smoke or something like that. | ||
| You can actually be wrong. | ||
| And that's what this country has had a big problem with in some points, is that like for COVID, I mean, people would come on and say things about COVID that the one side or the other would think is wrong, or they would say, oh, you're false. | ||
| You're putting misinformation. | ||
| You're allowed to be wrong in this country. | ||
| People say, we didn't land on the moon or we did land on the moon. | ||
| That's not something that your speech is taken down for, because I'm a free speech absolutist, actually. | ||
| So I'd just like to see people, you know, think more about that when they think of what speech is. | ||
| And we should have free speech, and we do have free speech in this country. | ||
| But it is also true that if you work for a corporation, you know, you can't walk into a restaurant as a server and have political slogans on your shirt just because you happen to believe one thing or another. | ||
| You can be fired for that. | ||
| Same goes for TV. | ||
| So anyway, those are my comments. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Ben is in Chicago, Illinois, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Ben. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I'm going to cover a lot of things, so I'm going to try and keep it quick. | ||
| Calling the killer of Charlie Kirk, I think this is in the FBI Kash Patel day two questioning. | ||
| One of the congresswomen mentioned that the killer was a furry and had a boyfriend, and that was the reason he's a liberal. | ||
| Any human being on earth can be a furry and have a boyfriend that has no that doesn't mean anything at all. | ||
| I currently live in Chicago, and Chicago is going through a giant budget gap crisis that nobody talks about. | ||
| All the states in America mostly are having a giant budget gap. | ||
| And Chicago, these Democrat-led cities, are especially mismanaging budgets. | ||
| The CTA, the police, CPS, Chicago Police Public Schooling all have budget gaps, and they're turning to ticketing machines to try and make all this money of adding all these cash cow cameras, which is a horrible idea. | ||
| Secondly, I'm going to change gears and talk about the cartel and the sexual exploitation that they commit on children, minors, and women, just to get to the United States of America. | ||
| And people need to realize that the cost of women getting to this country through Mexico is sexual abuse. | ||
| There was a caller yesterday who said that his food stamps got reduced to $20. | ||
| And I don't know what country we live in where old people only get $20 a month. | ||
| This is absolutely horrible. | ||
| And the replay of AI chatbots that got played yesterday was heartbreaking to hear that these AI chatbites can groom children and influence them because of their young age. | ||
| It's absolutely horrible. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Have a good night, everybody. | ||
| Marsha is in Hibitza, Georgia on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Marsha. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Good, thank you. | ||
| I understand that we're going to have Joe Manchin on in a couple of minutes. | ||
| We put him out of office for a reason. | ||
| He flip-flops. | ||
| He is not a Democrat. | ||
| And also, in all the things that's going on with President Trump, he needs to be impeached. | ||
| It was like he is ruining our country. | ||
| He's blowing up stuff. | ||
| He's starting wars. | ||
| And everybody that keeps being on his side, and we have congressmen, all of them need to be voted out of office. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Next up is Joe in Grayson, Kentucky on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Joe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| My comment is, when are we as a nation going to realize that everyone who is in the political realm is a crook or will be a crook whenever they go into all after they go into office? | ||
| I voted one time, 62 years old. | ||
| I voted one time because I had an opportunity to vote for somebody I believed in. | ||
| The rest of the time, you have to vote for the lesser of the two evils. | ||
| That's about it. | ||
| Jane is in Louisiana on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Jane. | ||
| Jane, go ahead. | ||
| You're on for open forum. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Excuse me? | |
| Go ahead, Jane. | ||
| In Louisiana? | ||
| You're in open forum. | ||
| What's your comment? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My comment is there's the lady that called in just a little bit earlier, and she said she doesn't recognize this is America, and she's actually scared. | |
| Well, I felt that way under Joe Biden. | ||
| So it's sad that any American, okay, Democrat or Republic, has to not recognize their country and to be afraid in their own country. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Bill is in Brooklyn, New York on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Bill. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Isn't it true that, well, maybe, I don't know. | ||
| Was the FCC chairman appointed by Donald Trump? | ||
| And also, did he not write the FCC portion of the 2025 playbook? | ||
| I don't know the answer to that question, and I don't know that I can look it up that quickly. | ||
| But did you have any broader comment? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, is he not an appointee of Donald Trump? | |
| Yes, he is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Well, that's what I mean. | ||
| So did he not write that portion of the 2025 playbook? | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| I just don't know the answer to that question. | ||
| I wasn't able to look it up quickly. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| But let's go to Ken in Queens, New York on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Ken. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hi. | |
| I just have a question. | ||
| Why is it that so many of your callers all seem to parrot mindlessly the same thing? | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Don't they seem to realize that if you didn't take their call, you wouldn't have a TV show? | ||
| I want you to finish your point, Ken, but I just want to answer the question of the previous caller that, yes, Brendan Carr did write the chapter on the FCC in Project 2025, which is what the previous caller was referencing. | ||
| That was accurate. | ||
| And I'm sorry, Ken, I interrupted you. | ||
| Please continue. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, that was all. | |
| I just wanted to know. | ||
| Why do they do this? | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, I do want to highlight once more that later on today, we are going to be covering the memorial service for Charlie Kirk that's going to be held in Arizona at the State Farm Stadium. | ||
| Once again, that's going to be airing starting at 2 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN as well as online at c-span.org and on our mobile app, C-SPAN Now. | ||
| Bruce is in Buffalo, New York, and on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Go ahead, Bruce. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But that's what I believe. | |
| You have to turn down the volume on your TV and then go ahead, Bruce. | ||
| All right, let's try Ron in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Ron. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I think George Washington said it best, beware of a president who seeks revenge. | ||
| And I think JFK also said it best when he said, the greatest enemy of the truth is not the lie. | ||
| It's the people who believe the lie. | ||
| And I think that pertains to our current president. | ||
| And I think he has a persecution complex. | ||
| What Jimmy Kimmel said the other night was basically something that he, that Trump said after someone asked him how he felt about the killing of Charlie Kirk. | ||
| He says, we have a great complex being built here, a $200 million ballroom. | ||
| And that's how he answered the question. | ||
| So Jimmy Kimmel made fun of the way he answered that question. | ||
| And that was basically something that someone who has a paranoia or a persecution complex would say. | ||
| And I think also Trump is also very jealous of Joe Biden. | ||
| You went the way he talks about him. | ||
| He can call him anything he wants to, but Joe Biden was 10 times the president that this guy will ever be. | ||
| So that's my comment for today. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Jill is in Austin, Texas on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Jill. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| You know, all these conversations going on, there's one thing that doesn't get talked about much is the kind of, and it's going to sound odd or voodoo to a lot of people, but this, | ||
| you read your history, a lot of this just kind of feels like Weird term, but a Bolshevik tenor or a Marxist feel to what's happening on the left with the violence, | ||
| the rhetoric, and it sort of feels like an, I mean, metaphorically, like the Bolsheviks have their hands on our throats for some weird reason. | ||
| It just feels so historical. | ||
| And I'd like to hear more people comment about that. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, that's all the time that we have for open forum. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We're now joined by former West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, formerly a Democrat, now an Independent. | ||
| And he is the author of the new book, Dead Center, in Defense of Common Sense. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington, Journalist. | ||
| Thank you, Kimberly. | ||
| It's good to be with you. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Now, we have been talking all morning about political polarization and free speech in this country in the wake of the shooting of Charlie Kirk. | ||
| And I wonder what has been your reaction to this increased polarization. | ||
| You know, I heard the president first of the week say something about after he had been briefed that this young man came from, you know, the young man who's the accused assassin, came from a good family, background family, well-raised, very, very bright and intelligent, and he was radicalized on the internet. | ||
| Well, the internet, and so that the people back home watching, the social platforms where so many people get their news from has no restraints whatsoever. | ||
| They're totally immune from whatever they allow on their platform. | ||
| And you've been hearing now that people are trying to sue because you've been they had a family or their son or their daughter was encouraged to commit suicide or do some bodily harm or do something crazy. | ||
| Well, if that's the case, why don't we take the same approach to all of our platforms where we get most people get their news, especially the young people, and put guardrails on it the same as we do on freedom of speech. | ||
| First Amendment, you can't go out and yell that it causes bodily harm. | ||
| You can't defame somebody and take away their ability to protect their good name. | ||
| You can't do those things, and you are held accountable. | ||
| On the platform, you can go onto one of the social platforms and say anything you want about me or you or anyone else. | ||
| And it's almost no one's held accountable. | ||
| You can try to go after the person, but you should hold the platform because once the platform lets it out and millions of people hear something or see something, that's tough to put that genie back in the bottle. | ||
| So I'm saying, Mr. President, you've identified the problem. | ||
| The problem is no one being held accountable and responsible for what they're allowing on their social platforms. | ||
| It's just for the purpose of having more viewers and saying outrageous things that creates more viewers and creates more revenue. | ||
| That has to stop. | ||
| And there's a thing called Section 230 that 1996, when the internet was in its infancy, they said, oh, you've got to give us protection, all these platforms starting up then. | ||
| Because if you don't, we won't be able to ever get this platform off the ground and what we call to mature it. | ||
| Well, they should have given two or three years. | ||
| It's indefinite. | ||
| This is time to stop it, Mr. President. | ||
| That's what I would say to our president. | ||
| It's time to make sure that people are held accountable and responsible for their words, because words will lead to action, and it has. | ||
| You know, it's interesting because in our previous segment in Open Forum, as well as in earlier conversations today, we've had a lot of callers saying that they were banned from Twitter or Facebook for comments about the election being stolen after President Biden was elected, or about their statements regarding COVID vaccines, and that that was unfair, just like there are people on the left saying that they should be protected for their commentary about Charlie Kirk. | ||
| How do you mesh the idea of allowing people to have their freedom of speech with these guardrails that you're talking about for social media platforms? | ||
| I'm not going to try to write the rule books for them. | ||
| I'm saying that your platform is reaching millions and millions of people and influencing them, especially young people. | ||
| Young people aren't going to the mainstream media. | ||
| They're not going to the newspapers or any of that. | ||
| They're going right to the social platforms. | ||
| So they can, if they have podcasters they like and this and that or the podcasters on one of the platforms and it's basically spewing incentive words that create a thought process that leads to action or leads to a violence or things of that sort, which is what the president has identified, President Trump identified as this person that's been accused right now and arrested. | ||
| So someone would be held accountable. | ||
| Then they're going to figure out what they think they can or not. | ||
| Right now, they have nobody. | ||
| They don't have to have anyone there for censoring. | ||
| They don't have to have a team saying, that could really incite people to do things that shouldn't be done. | ||
| Let me just tell you, in my hometown of Farmington, West Virginia, which the only thing I would say about the book is this. | ||
| The book basically will tell you how I was able to make the decisions I made in a very tough environment. | ||
| But I didn't look at one side being right and one side being wrong. | ||
| It just didn't make sense. | ||
| I couldn't go home and explain it. | ||
| Where I come from in Farmington, West Virginia, people, the way I was raised, people were made very sure that my words meant something. | ||
| I would be held accountable and responsible for my words and my actions too. | ||
| And usually they taught me, sometimes your words will lead to actions which you regret. | ||
| So be very careful. | ||
| And I've always been that way. | ||
| I'm not going to accuse people of being right or wrong and I just can't, you know, don't agree with you. | ||
| I might have a different idea. | ||
| I want to work with you. | ||
| And in the political process, I love everybody on both sides. | ||
| You do ground your memoir in this idea of centrism as a way out of some of the political polarization in this country. | ||
| I want to read an excerpt from the book. | ||
| Dead center is where I've been my entire life. | ||
| It's where the real solutions lie. | ||
| If we are ever going to tame the anger, bitterness, intolerance, and tribalism that have come to define our broken political system, dead center is where we have to start. | ||
| It's the only place where people still talk to each other, where progress isn't a zero-sum game, and where governing is still possible. | ||
| How can you find where the dead center is when people have such differing views of what exactly constitutes far right and far left? | ||
| Well, let's take the 117th Congress when we were split 50-50. | ||
| That hadn't happened for a whole Congress, which is a two-year session. | ||
| 117th was two years, which started in 2021 when Joe Biden and it went through the beginning of 2023 when the new Congress came in, the 118th. | ||
| We did more things, got more things accomplished because it got to the point where, you know, my vote, every vote was so critical. | ||
| I got caught right in the middle because they could not control me. | ||
| So if the Democrats were trying to push an agenda that I thought was too far out of the mainstream, and I couldn't take that and try to explain it back home why I voted for it other than I was pressured to vote for something, which I never have been. | ||
| I never would take that pressure. | ||
| That was the middle, and that's how we got dead center. | ||
| How did I get caught in the middle? | ||
| Why was I always the one being called over to the White House trying to convince me to vote for something that just didn't make sense? | ||
| I couldn't come to grips with it. | ||
| And I try to explain in a very, very respectful, civil way. | ||
| And I think people have lost that. | ||
| People, I've heard talking about this is going to cause a war with all this turmoil going on now, and we need a crusade. | ||
| Kimberly, the only crusade this country needs right now is a crusade of civility. | ||
| We've got to get back to respect. | ||
| You and I might not agree. | ||
| You might not be all wrong, but you might not be all right. | ||
| And maybe I can help it be a little bit better so we both can accept it. | ||
| That's the way I've looked at things. | ||
| I didn't, I was born and raised in a household, and politically the household was always Democrat. | ||
| My whole state was Democrat at that time. | ||
| Now my whole state is Republican. | ||
| What caused this major shift within one decade, a 10-year period, never happened before. | ||
| We went from 75% being Democrat to over 80% being Republican. | ||
| And I know the same people. | ||
| They're the same people I was born and raised with. | ||
| They're reasonable, responsible, but they thought that one party has pushed them to a position they didn't understand who they were. | ||
| Where would you describe or how would you describe what the political center is in the United States right now? | ||
| I think people still want accommodation. | ||
| They want to make sure that we have a secured, safe country, safe neighborhoods. | ||
| So crime and border security has given Donald Trump all the protection, all the backup he needs right now to do some incendiary things that doesn't make sense at all. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Like what? | |
| The freedom of speech. | ||
| Basically, I'm going to make sure that Kimberly can't say certain things and maybe I can force C-SPAN to take her off the air. | ||
| That's not, and we don't do that. | ||
| That's not America. | ||
| But again, you ought to be careful what you're saying and how you say it, too. | ||
| So take the Jimmy Kimmel thing. | ||
| On a network, they were able to put that pressure and make their changes right, wrong, or indifferent, however people might think about that. | ||
| But they don't do it on social platform or on cable news. | ||
| Not the same restrictions. | ||
| Let's make sure we're all playing with the same rule book, how we receive it and receive our information. | ||
| The airwaves belongs to all of us, and the government has a responsibility that there should be checks and balances before you incentivize somebody to do something because you make it look like that's right. | ||
| I know we're going to have a lot of callers with questions for you this segment, so we're going to get into that early, but I want to remind folks that our phone line for Democrats is 202-748-8000. | ||
| For Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| And for Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| I'm so glad you had an independent phone number. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| We need that, especially for you today. | ||
| I know. | ||
| I do want to highlight one area where you start out your book, which is Negotiations with President Biden on the Build Back Better Bill, which I'm guessing you start with because it's pretty emblematic of some of those struggles you faced when you were in the Senate. | ||
| Can you talk about that and what it meant for you and your place in the United States? | ||
| Let me just say this, that Joe Biden has been a friend. | ||
| I've known him forever, okay, and a good man. | ||
| When he became president, they first of all wanted to come out with what they call American Rescue Plan, the ARP, which is $1.9 trillion. | ||
| We had just, because of COVID, we had just spent, bipartisan-wise, $3.2 trillion. | ||
| Now, when you think about our country running on about $5.5 trillion a year, we're close to almost doubling what we had done at the end of the year within almost nine months. | ||
| So that much more money. | ||
| That's a lot of money to digest. | ||
| And Joe Biden comes out and he says he wants to do an American rescue plan and do it with reconciliation, which we call the nuclear option, because you don't have to talk to the other side. | ||
| The Senate is designed that the minority has input. | ||
| You can't shut the minority out. | ||
| That was the whole purpose of our founding fathers wanting us to have something completely different. | ||
| And the Senate is the most iconic brand of bringing people together, giving stability to a political process. | ||
| That's what the Senate's taking that away when they use the option. | ||
| The only reconciliation option should be you shouldn't shut the government down or make it financially insolvent. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| And with doing that, that's what they were doing. | ||
| So I said, Mr. President, don't do that. | ||
| Please don't. | ||
| Right now you've been told Republicans don't want to work with you. | ||
| Give them a chance. | ||
| Put it in the committees and say, hey, in 60 or 90 days, give it to me back. | ||
| If not, then do what you've got to do, because you believe it's good for the American people. | ||
| Nope, had to do it, had to do it, had to do it. | ||
| I said, Mr. President, I won't do this again. | ||
| This is the wrong way to run this government. | ||
| Now, that was the first American Rescue Plan. | ||
| That's $1.9 trillion. | ||
| Put $1.9 on 3.2, and you're up to, what, 5.1? | ||
| You have, within one year, doubled the amount of money we've thrown into the system here in the United States of America. | ||
| And I said, this is bad. | ||
| It's going to create one heck of a recession. | ||
| We don't have people going back to work. | ||
| We have a vaccine that works. | ||
| Let's do something. | ||
| Then the BBB. | ||
| I said, Mr. President, this is not for me. | ||
| It's too much. | ||
| I can't do it. | ||
| Let it calm down. | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| So we pulled out the bipartisan infrastructure bill. | ||
| We need an infrastructure. | ||
| We did some things in that, but I couldn't get there for eight months. | ||
| And I finally had to say, Mr. President, you and I have been friends. | ||
| We've known each other for a long time. | ||
| We're about the same vintage. | ||
| You're a little older than me, but not that much. | ||
| You passed this piece of legislation, which you say is your marquee piece for the Democratic Party, and you're changing the psychic of the nation away from John Kennedy. | ||
| That's not what your country can do for you, what you can do for your country. | ||
| You're changing it to how much can my country do for me? | ||
| And I said, sir, I'm so sorry. | ||
| Respectfully, I cannot any way, shape, or form support this or vote for it. | ||
| And then? | ||
| And then. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, and then. | |
| It got a little dicey out there. | ||
| It got a little dicey. | ||
| Got a little dicey. | ||
| And the White House put out a statement on the status of the negotiations. | ||
| That caused all the problems. | ||
| It caused all the problems. | ||
| I'm looking at it in your book. | ||
| It was a statement from President Biden on the Build Back Better Act. | ||
| And in it, he says, my team and I are having ongoing discussions with Senator Manchin. | ||
| That work will continue next week. | ||
| And let me just tell you that, okay? | ||
| So I've been getting death threats, been harassed and everything. | ||
| I can take all that as a public figure, okay? | ||
| But my family and all the death threats, and they're putting and pinpointing me as one person out of 50 Democrats, only one, Joe Manchin, is not online, is not in line. | ||
| And we have some video of the protests that were actually outside of your house vote. | ||
| And I invited all of them to come up to my office. | ||
| A few of them came up the next day so we could talk about it. | ||
| This is how it happens. | ||
| And that is what it is. | ||
| I'm okay with all that. | ||
| It was peaceful. | ||
| It was civil. | ||
| These people, a lot of them were back in West Virginia, and they were all fired up in what they believed. | ||
| I wanted to hear more from them. | ||
| They came up. | ||
| They heard my point of view. | ||
| We probably walked away not agreeing on everything or maybe not agreeing at all, but we respected each other for at least having dialogue. | ||
| That's all I've asked for. | ||
| Some of the groups don't want any dialogue. | ||
| They just want to riot. | ||
| They want to come and just disrupt, and that's fine. | ||
| I said, then you don't want democracy to work. | ||
| And that led to your no vote on the legislation. | ||
| Well, the thing about it is, I was already there. | ||
| I told the president I couldn't get there. | ||
| But he wanted to wait. | ||
| And he said, yo, we're going to wait until after the Christmas vacation because Chuck Schumer was trying to get a vote before we left for Christmas that year. | ||
| And I said, fine. | ||
| I said, Mr. President, you know I can't get there. | ||
| I don't know what you're going to do to change it. | ||
| But if you want to do that, are you going to put a statement out? | ||
| Yes, I am. | ||
| Fine, the statement came out. | ||
| They sent it to us. | ||
| I said, oh, my goodness, that's putting a target on my back again. | ||
| Don't need any more targets. | ||
| For eight months, I've been attacked and threatened. | ||
| They're not going to change me. | ||
| That's not going to frighten me not to do the right thing, what I think is right. | ||
| So we sent back, just put his word, make it generic. | ||
| I have more negotiations to do with the entire group. | ||
| Came right back immediately. | ||
| Nope, Joe Manchin. | ||
| I said, oh, tells me everything. | ||
| Don't care about me. | ||
| Don't care about my family. | ||
| Don't care about the threats we're receiving. | ||
| It's all about you. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| And that's when we pulled a plug. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, I know we have a ton of questions from callers, as well as a text message we received from Jesse in Phoenix, Arizona, who says, Does Senator Joe think that more people should become independents? | ||
| And if such a large group exists, does he think that a third party should be created? | ||
| Jesse, I thank you for the question. | ||
| I have always thought that we could work out our differences with the two-party system that we have, but it's failed because it's become a duopoly. | ||
| We have a major corporation called the Democratic Party and a major corporation called the Republican Party. | ||
| And both of their mode of operandum, their business plan, is fear and hatred. | ||
| That's all we're seeing. | ||
| You know, if you're not a Democrat, then we've got to fear you about the other side, the Republican, and then also hate them and join my corporation. | ||
| That's not the way. | ||
| And I don't know if we can change that or not because the money is so strong, billions of dollars. | ||
| So yes, I believe that it is time, because that is the only thing that'll make them come to their senses, that they see the majority of Americans. | ||
| Let me give you the facts. | ||
| 23, 24% are registered Democrats in the United States of America. | ||
| 26-27% Republicans. | ||
| Close to 50% are no party affiliation like me, or maybe Jackie that's independent. | ||
| But you have no voice. | ||
| When you elect somebody that you know it's going to be very centrist and you really feel good because that person will represent my values, they come to Washington especially, and there is no middle. | ||
| You have to pick a side. | ||
| And what we're saying is we have got to create the middle in Washington, that people have a place when they come, not to get radicalized and say, well, I've got to join this tribe or this tribe. | ||
| No. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What do you think of Elon Musk's efforts to start a third party? | |
| I'm glad that Elon has seen that that might be a solution. | ||
| He's been pressed, been polarized to where they might think, well, maybe Elon just wants to own this party. | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| I think he really sees, I hope he does, that it's going to take that independence, what built this great country, for him to come here and have the success he's had, and anybody else to realize only in America. | ||
| But you can only do it as long as we have a free flow of ideas and thoughts, freedom of speech, but control to the state that we can't incite riots and defame people and be held accountable and responsible for what you say. | ||
| Miriam is in Farr, Texas, on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Miriam. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I used to like you as a Democrat, but I noticed that you just wanted attention after a while. | |
| And for that reason, I'm not going to, speaking of freedom of speech, I'm not going to buy your books. | ||
| I think you've become a millionaire, and your people in West Virginia are still really, really poor. | ||
| But I wanted to ask you a question on leadership, because that's the thing that bothers us people. | ||
| That right now, the leader is Trump. | ||
| And Trump is the one that is instigating a lot of violence out there. | ||
| And for some reason, Republicans will not stand up to him. | ||
| They're not straightforward. | ||
| They don't call it what it is. | ||
| And that's what aggravates us. | ||
| I know that. | ||
| So, Miriam, what is that question? | ||
| My question is, if he thinks that leadership is a vital role in our society. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Let's let him respond. | ||
| Mary, let me just first of all tell you this. | ||
| I've never made $1 in 40 years I've been in public service off of a service of my office. | ||
| Never. | ||
| I had a little business, grew up in a little town, Farmington, West Virginia, three-room garage apartment, and my dad and my grandfather had a little grocery store and a furniture store, so we all worked hard. | ||
| With all of that, what you're saying right now, what the president is doing, the president is the commander-in-chief. | ||
| He is the president of the United States. | ||
| I am begging our president to bring us together. | ||
| Stop this. | ||
| He can do it. | ||
| He can have the leadership where everyone will follow. | ||
| Democrats will say we want our president to be a leader. | ||
| We need to be comforted right now. | ||
| I had horrific mine accidents in my state when I was governor. | ||
| And the terrific mine accidents I had, I knew that we had to do better in the mining laws to make sure that people were safer when they went to work and could come home safe to the loved ones. | ||
| But I knew when we lost 29 husbands, fathers, sons in the upper big branch, and we lost Arikoma and we lost Sago. | ||
| These mine accidents, I knew I had to change the law. | ||
| But I knew, first of all, I had to comfort the people, the people who had lost their breadwinner. | ||
| What were they going to do in their lives now? | ||
| I tried to do everything I could to make sure they had the ability to move on and to go on and to know that we would have their back. | ||
| That's what we call comforting. | ||
| You have a responsibility as an executive, as leader, whether it be a governor or a president, to bring your people back together, show them their true value as the humans, the humans that we deal with every day. | ||
| It's not the businesses and corporations. | ||
| And then I changed the laws in West Virginia. | ||
| You can check that too. | ||
| Everything was around safety. | ||
| We would not let people go into a workplace unless they had, if they saw something wrong, they should be able to speak out and stop it before someone got hurt. | ||
| I did all of those things. | ||
| And that's public service. | ||
| I've never had a calling of self-service. | ||
| Never. | ||
| And I think my record will show that. | ||
| Speaking of public service, Tom from Sarasota, Florida says, ask the senator if he would consider running for president from any party. | ||
| We could all get behind common sense in government. | ||
| I would do everything I can to support and help my country. | ||
| I would do that. | ||
| The calling was there. | ||
| I think there's an awful lot of good people out there that have the ability to lead. | ||
| We've got to find that person who really, truly resonates with all of us, and we can tell. | ||
| And I said, in West Virginia, Kimberly, we can shake your hand, look in your eyes, and see your soul. | ||
| It's all we've got. | ||
| We didn't have a lot of material goods. | ||
| We just had good gut instincts and we took care of each other. | ||
| The other side was never our enemy. | ||
| And the other side didn't have all the answers, but they all weren't always wrong. | ||
| And we didn't have all the answers, and we all weren't always right. | ||
| Do you think that person that resonates is you? | ||
| Well, I know one thing. | ||
| I think there's people like me that believe that. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| And I thought this last election here, when you start polling, it was going to be Joe Biden and Donald Trump again. | ||
| They were looking for something different. | ||
| And they're going to be looking for something different, I think, in 2028. | ||
| And I thought, wouldn't it be great if you had people that might have been associated as a Democrat in their past or a Republican in their past, formed a bond to show how a joint leadership team could work to try to heal the country and have a homogeneous staff and a cabinet that represented American, not just one side of America or one side of the political spectrum? | ||
| I think all that is needed. | ||
| And we're going to see if we can rise up to that. | ||
| If we get to where we only have a decision that the two duopoly businesses give us to choose from, and there's 160 million, I'm using that round figures, 160 million that will vote in a general election who the leader's going to be, but the two parties have already decided, maybe with only 10 million on each side deciding who's in the primary, because they control the primary, and said, okay, Kimberly, here's your choice. | ||
| I don't like either one of them. | ||
| That's what you're going to get. | ||
| Pick one or the other. | ||
| Well, I think we need to push that differently. | ||
| And you have a strong third party that says, you know, I don't think they're always wrong, but I don't think they're right. | ||
| I don't think they're always right, but I don't think they're always wrong. | ||
| And let me try. | ||
| Try going down this path. | ||
| And that path there would be more of a centrist, more of an independent. | ||
| So the grand old party wants to be grand again, and they don't feel like they have a home. | ||
| And the Democrat Party, like myself, wants to be responsible and compassionate and don't believe I have a home. | ||
| The majority of people in America in the political spectrum are homeless. | ||
| But they have to go somewhere to participate, and that's not right. | ||
| Tom is in Richmond Hill, Georgia, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Tom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, I'm really happy to finally talk to you. | |
| I was a West Virginian. | ||
| Hey, Tom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I was outside of Moorefield. | |
| You probably never heard of it. | ||
| Oh, I know Moorefield extremely well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, really? | |
| I do. | ||
| That's great. | ||
| I was very proud as a Republican to be a constituent of yours. | ||
| There were some things that I disagreed with, but all in all, I was very proud of you. | ||
| My question is, where do you come down on lies in B.S. whose intent is clearly to promote murder and terrorism and insurrection? | ||
| It can't be done. | ||
| It really can't. | ||
| We cannot tolerate that in any way, shape, or form. | ||
| And, you know, when you look about how did this great country ever get enough courage to say, this British monarch is wrong. | ||
| King George is wrong. | ||
| I don't like this type of oppression. | ||
| We're going to change it. | ||
| And I'm willing to sacrifice. | ||
| I mean, really sacrifice to have the freedoms I believe most Americans at that time would like to have had to get out from under the thumb of the British Empire. | ||
| And it happened. | ||
| And we can't go back to that, Tom, and that's exactly what we see is happening. | ||
| People are being pushed to make extreme ideas to extreme action, which is deadly. | ||
| We have a similar comment from Robert in Price, Utah, who says, first, Joe, you're right in saying the two parties must work together. | ||
| However, in order to do that, you're asking half the country to ignore an insurrection, the pardoning of traitors, and the people who would rather engage in performance politics than ever work with the other side for the good of the people. | ||
| And who is that, Robert? | ||
| Okay, Robert, let me say this. | ||
| I voted to impeach President Trump on the insurrection. | ||
| I don't think anything was more absolutely horrific and horrible than that. | ||
| I was there. | ||
| I was in the Senate chambers when the military came in and took us out, all 100 senators, down into a safe, secured area. | ||
| We didn't know how horrible this riot was until we went down and they turned the monitors on. | ||
| So no, no, I was there, and I felt very strongly about that was an insurrection. | ||
| That was not a visit to come talk to me about the differences we may have. | ||
| So those type of things there cannot, just because I am more of a centrist, I'm not liberal. | ||
| The fundamentals of his question are how do you work with people who are supportive of this? | ||
| The fact that President Trump pardoned all those folks and the fact that many of the people who were there. | ||
| The pardon should have never happened. | ||
| That was so wrong to pardon those folks that basically were part of this insurrection and they were found guilty. | ||
| If you wanted to know really the effects, talk to the Capitol Police that was there every day to protect us and to protect our capital, what they had gone and endured. | ||
| That's why the people were prosecuted. | ||
| So let's take a concrete example. | ||
| Let's say you go back to the Senate and you are working with some of your peers who were there just like you on January 6th, and you're asked to work with them across that difference. | ||
| And kind of the same thing. | ||
| Let me just be honest. | ||
| That difference never came up, Kimberly, from this. | ||
| They knew better. | ||
| The ones who basically kept their mouth quiet, kept their mouth shut, didn't say anything, because they knew the political fallout. | ||
| You know, when a person becomes as popular as President Trump has become and solidified within his base, they knew that could be a force if they wanted to be in office. | ||
| And I kept saying, this job is not the best job I've ever had. | ||
| It's not worth it to sell your soul. | ||
| And I think there's enough good people. | ||
| I truly believe there's enough good people. | ||
| And the people I worked with on both sides, they both knew. | ||
| Merlene in Tacoma Park, Maryland, wanted to know if you support term limits and why. | ||
| Most certainly. | ||
| Let me give you my story on term limits. | ||
| I, for 15 years ago and before, I never was a supporter of term limits. | ||
| So I'm having a town hall meeting in southern West Virginia. | ||
| And a couple hundred people, and a lady came up, a beautiful lady. | ||
| She stood up and she says, Joe, I would sure hope you would support term limits. | ||
| And I think it's great to have term limits. | ||
| And so I started telling her all the things. | ||
| Well, you lose all the expertise, you lose seniority, you lose this, you lose that, and it might be more harmful than helpful. | ||
| She said, listen, Joe, if we had term limits, maybe we'd get one good term out of you. | ||
| Kimberly, I couldn't argue with her. | ||
| She convinced me. | ||
| She's right, because I've seen people that are scared to make the right decision when they know it's right for the consequences. | ||
| And I'm thinking, the worst consequence I've got, if I'm not in agreement and the people back home, I have a right to go back home and explain my position. | ||
| And if you're not willing to work for that, if you're not willing to go home and say, hey, this is why I believe this way, this is why I voted that way, they might not accept it, but at least you are able to give them an explanation. | ||
| They'll walk away. | ||
| Most of them say, well, I don't agree, but I think I understand how he made his decision. | ||
| So on that, that there, she said that, and I've said this, you're absolutely correct. | ||
| I believe in term limits. | ||
| I believe that the Senate, the United States Senate, should have two six-year terms. | ||
| I believe the House should have six two-year terms. | ||
| That's 12 years. | ||
| I believe the president should be one six-year term. | ||
| The president should never run for re-election. | ||
| You're going to be commander-in-chief from the first day to the last day you're there. | ||
| You're doing what's best for the people, not what's best for you to get re-elected or your party to be in power. | ||
| Do your job. | ||
| And I believe the Supreme Court should be one 18-year term. | ||
| David is in Lynchburg, Virginia, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, Joe. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Fellow West Virginia from Highway, West Virginia. | ||
| And a lot of good West Virginians. | ||
| I appreciate it, Dave, Tom, and you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a Vietnam veteran. | |
| God bless you. | ||
| One of 17 kids. | ||
| I was born and raised in Ohio. | ||
| I've watched my parents. | ||
| They grew $368 a month for Social Security and lived on it and lived on it. | ||
| And all these senators and stuff, I think they ought to take $100,000 away from the senators. | ||
| All this money that comes to put the people out of job, the Department of Education, and all this stuff. | ||
| Where actually, where is all that money? | ||
| A question. | ||
| Where is all that money at? | ||
| It done and it blew the David, I want to make sure we're understanding your question clearly. | ||
| Are you asking what happened to the money that was allocated for these departments that have been scaled back or shut down? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, and the people that lost their job, they voted, they voted for Trump, but they still, a lot 90% of them, are just how many, what percentage of the ones that voted for Trump that lost their jobs and lost their validity. | |
| Well, let me just say this, David. | ||
| We have 36 going on, $37 trillion of debt. | ||
| When I went into the Senate November 15th of 2010, the debt was at $13 trillion. | ||
| How in the world are we so irresponsible to pile this much debt onto the public? | ||
| And it will have consequences. | ||
| Your children, your grandchildren, anybody, and everybody will be affected. | ||
| And if we don't do something to get our finances in control, no different than your parents raising all of your children and having a budget they had to basically stick with 1,000%. | ||
| They could not veer from that. | ||
| They couldn't have made it. | ||
| But there's no checks and balances on the federal government. | ||
| We just keep printing more money and incurring more debt, and it will be the downfall of us. | ||
| So these agencies, you know, we don't run government like a business, but we should examine how we run our government like businesses do. | ||
| There should be stress testing. | ||
| There should be reviews. | ||
| A lot of these agencies have come into being because a president would run on a platform and they'd start something. | ||
| I'll give you a perfect one. | ||
| The Department of Education was started in 1979 with Jimmy Carter. | ||
| There was no Department of Education before that, a federal. | ||
| Every state's responsible for educating their children. | ||
| It's all local. | ||
| It's the 10th Amendment, states' rights. | ||
| But we did that. | ||
| We thought, well, we'll have an oversight. | ||
| Well, that stayed, you know, and now it's still into place, but they're changing it drastically, if you will. | ||
| Anyway, an awful lot of these things can be. | ||
| The country has to get into a position to where fiscal responsibility is its first and foremost thing that it does, because without that, you couldn't have lived your life. | ||
| Businesses can't succeed, and states can't survive. | ||
| And we're in a position now to where Mike Mullen, who was chief, he was the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the head guy back in 2011, we asked him a question in the Armed Services Committee, what's the greatest threat the United States faces? | ||
| And I thought, well, I'm going to hear it now. | ||
| China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, whatever it may be. | ||
| He said, didn't blink an eye. | ||
| The death of the nation will take us down before any foreign power will take us over. | ||
| What do you think of the way that President Trump has been using rescissions to claw back some funding appropriated by Congress? | ||
| That's a difficult situation. | ||
| He should never do that because it goes through a process. | ||
| When you have, we haven't even had a budget within 20 years. | ||
| They can't even do that because the powers don't want it to happen that way. | ||
| They get to control at the end of the fiscal year spending, how it goes. | ||
| They have the four corners. | ||
| You've heard of that. | ||
| They do it at the end of the year. | ||
| They all get together before Christmas. | ||
| Can you explain the four corners for folks? | ||
| The four corners are this. | ||
| The majority leader in the Senate, whoever's in power right now, would be John Thune. | ||
| And the minority in the Senate, or what they call the ranking member, that's going to be Chuck Schumer, the Democrats, because the Republicans have more members. | ||
| Anybody that has more members is the majority party. | ||
| In the House, the same way. | ||
| So you have the majority and you have Mike Johnson and then you have King Jeffries as the minority or the ranking member. | ||
| Those four offices pretty much control everything. | ||
| And it never had been that way. | ||
| Why senators and congresspeople have just basically allowed To the four corners to have all this power. | ||
| As compared to the regular appropriations process where. | ||
| Yeah, so when it goes to appropriation, appropriation still works. | ||
| I was on appropriations committee and we go through every 12, what we call 12 bills that we have because of the different agencies and how we're going to fund them. | ||
| The most important we do every time, and it gets done properly, is the NDAA, National Defense Authorization Act. | ||
| We sit down, the committee, and we go into a closed area with no press, no nothing, and we sit there and basically any amendment you want to do. | ||
| You discuss everything. | ||
| It's a wonderful process. | ||
| It's the way I think all of Congress could work. | ||
| It's the only committee that works that way right now. | ||
| Everything else, back and forth. | ||
| And you can pass something. | ||
| I was chairman of natural resources and energy. | ||
| And I worked with John Barroso. | ||
| We passed the piece of bill. | ||
| We passed it out. | ||
| Never went anywhere. | ||
| But some of your former colleagues are potentially going to support the government shutting down in just a little while because one of the reasons they're citing is they're saying what's the point of going through an appropriations process if the president can then just go back and pull back. | ||
| I understand all of that. | ||
| They're also saying that they want different types of spending to be done. | ||
| That's all fine. | ||
| That's what they should do. | ||
| But not in shutting things down. | ||
| But what do you think of the president's policies in regards to the rescissions? | ||
| The rescissions should not be done. | ||
| He should not go back. | ||
| He should go through the process. | ||
| You want to go back and talk. | ||
| You already have control of the executive. | ||
| You have the executive and you have control of the legislative branch. | ||
| The leadership of the House and the Senate is pretty much paying attention to what the President wants. | ||
| Tell them to go back and pull these back and go through a process and be on public record. | ||
| You rescission some of that spending, a trillion dollars or a billion, whatever it would be, and there's a reason, you give a purpose for it, fine. | ||
| To do it just by executive order and just cut back? | ||
| No. | ||
| That's not the job of the executive. | ||
| The power of the purse is with the Congress. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Let's hear from Marvin in Redford, Michigan on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Marvin. | ||
| Can you please turn down the volume on your TV then? | ||
| Ask your question. | ||
| All right, let's hear from Robert in Atlantic City, New Jersey on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Robert. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I wanted to comment on the military failing eight consecutive audits and the lobby that essentially degrades our social services, health care, education, and the lobby that makes Congress beholden to them. | ||
| If it's Trump's military budget, AOC votes for it. | ||
| If it's Biden's military budget, Republicans vote for it. | ||
| The difference between Blinken and Secretary Rubio seems almost non-existent. | ||
| And how can we control that lobby? | ||
| We, the people, would rather have that money spent domestically on Social Security, which Elon Musk called a Ponzi scheme. | ||
| $15 trillion spent since 911 and the fake weapons of mass destruction narrative. | ||
| And it seems like it's one party when it comes to our foreign policy. | ||
| You know, the point that Robert raises is interesting given what you just said about the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act, being one area where the actual appropriations process is working well. | ||
| And yet, when that money goes through, as Robert was pointing out, the Pentagon is still failing all of these audits. | ||
| The Pentagon is the only agency that doesn't even have an audit. | ||
| John McKay and I tried forever to get them to be audited. | ||
| Certain branches have stepped to the plate. | ||
| Navy, I think, is one. | ||
| But in general, the Department of Defense Is not audited as an agency, such as ENERGY or IRS or things, you know, different places that audit it. | ||
| The thing that's happened is that no one's being held accountable. | ||
| We do NDAA and the military. | ||
| The budget keeps going up. | ||
| We're going to spend a trillion dollars or more in just the finances of the debt of our nation than we do to defend our country. | ||
| And we tell other agents, other countries for NATO that they should be spending, remember it was 2%, now it's 3.5% to 5%. | ||
| Well, when you took at the GDP of our nation and you take 5%, you know, that's a chunk. | ||
| And we're not doing that. | ||
| So, with that being said, look at what we do for our military. | ||
| We take care of them for life. | ||
| We have that obligation. | ||
| A person puts a uniform on, willing to take a bullet for you and me for the safety of my family and me and this great country we have. | ||
| We're going to do everything we can to honor them. | ||
| And we give them retirements, we give them health care, we do all this. | ||
| And we should make sure we're doing it the right way and taking care of them. | ||
| Other countries don't. | ||
| So we incur a great amount of cost through after a person has served than when they're serving. | ||
| Sometimes we incur more costs on the back end. | ||
| That's our choice and responsibility, which I support. | ||
| But that comes at a cost and the high cost of that. | ||
| This other spending is just ridiculous, how we procure hammers and screwdrivers and everything. | ||
| It makes no sense whatsoever. | ||
| And that's where the audit needs to be. | ||
| And that's what Robert's talking about. | ||
| How can you throw so much money away and there's no one held accountable and responsible? | ||
| Overruns. | ||
| The F-35. | ||
| They kept tacking on and kept getting higher and higher and higher. | ||
| And I remember John McCain and I were talking. | ||
| And I said, John, in business, you give me a price, you build it for it. | ||
| If it was an overrun and I didn't ask for any changes, I told you what I wanted on the front end and you didn't perform, that's you. | ||
| That's because you're a bad business person. | ||
| But in procurement for military, oh no, if I made a miscalculation, I'm just going to charge you more at the end because you'll pay it. | ||
| We have a question from Elaine in Newport, Vermont, who says, Mr. Manchin, please square your relationship with the oil industry with the interests of your constituents, your former constituents at this point. | ||
| Seems like you don't support saving the environment or the planet. | ||
| Well, let me tell you that energy is a thing that I am totally committed to. | ||
| And when I did, I wrote the IRA Inflation Reduction Act, which I've been criticized on both sides. | ||
| I knew we had to produce the energy of this country. | ||
| And you wanted a different title for it, as I understand it. | ||
| It should have been. | ||
| That was my mistake. | ||
| It should have been the Energy Security Act, is exactly what it is, because that's exactly what it did. | ||
| I want to do, I think we're all responsible for the environment, every one of us. | ||
| And I think all of us want to breathe clean air and drink clean water. | ||
| And we should have that right and be able to do it. | ||
| We have the technology. | ||
| My difference between, let's say, more of an hard environmentalist versus someone who doesn't really care about the environment, whoever that may be, and those in the middle. | ||
| The pragmatic approach to take is how can we get what we need and also have what we want. | ||
| And writing that bill, I said, you cannot eliminate your way to a cleaner environment. | ||
| You just can't say quit using oil, quit using gas, quit using coal. | ||
| Those are all dispatchable. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| That's 24-7. | ||
| They can give you energy 24-7. | ||
| Rain or shine. | ||
| The renewables, we need a lot more work to be done to give us the battery storage we need. | ||
| We need to work on more nuclear. | ||
| They were trying to get rid of nuclear, too. | ||
| I brought that back. | ||
| We can do hydrogen, which we need. | ||
| It has the horsepower to run planes, trains, and everything in between. | ||
| All these different things will be carbon-less or carbon-free. | ||
| We have to get there. | ||
| We're not there. | ||
| So if you want the energy that we need, and the war over Ukraine started in Putin weaponized energy, oil and gas. | ||
| We better produce what we need to take care of ourselves and help our allies, but do it with technology, innovation. | ||
| You can innovate your way to a cleaner environment. | ||
| You won't eliminate it. | ||
| That's what I try to do. | ||
| So we're producing the energy that we need, and I'm producing the gas, the oil, and we still have coal needed for still making things of that sort. | ||
| But I'm investing into the technology and energy I want for the future. | ||
| And we did more with the bill than any time has ever been done in the history of the United States of America. | ||
| So I got caught in the middle, which is not a pleasant place to be. | ||
| Much of that has been rolled back, though, by the Trump administration. | ||
| A lot of it has been rolled back because I'll tell you why. | ||
| The Biden administration wanted to go when we passed the bill. | ||
| They could not pass the bill they wanted. | ||
| It was too far. | ||
| I wouldn't want to vote for it. | ||
| But we passed a bill that was balanced. | ||
| But the staff, and I told President Biden, your staff is moving this clear to the left. | ||
| You're trying to implement a bill you never passed. | ||
| So they were trying to do more with EVs and all this other stuff before we were able to have a reliable supply chain. | ||
| We're still really, we allowed in the last two decades for China to dominate the markets that produces the raw rare earth minerals that we need, processing of them, manufacturing of the anodes and cathodes and everything else for all this new battery revolution. | ||
| We never got into that. | ||
| We didn't want to. | ||
| It was too dirty for us. | ||
| Let someone else do it. | ||
| We'd like to be clean and green, but we want someone else to pay the price for it, whether it be the people in the Congo living in horrible conditions, digging these rare earth minerals and then processing them in China because they're too detrimental to the environment. | ||
| Well, this is called global climate. | ||
| It's not called West Virginia or United States climate. | ||
| So you have to get real. | ||
| And if you want to do it, innovate through technology and incentivize other countries to use the technology. | ||
| As they're going to use fossil, use it cleaner than as you're going to transition. | ||
| Show them how to do it. | ||
| Michael is in Denver, Colorado, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Michael. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you so much for taking my call. | ||
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Yes, we can. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, thank you. | |
| And yeah, Mr. Manchin, thank you, first of all, so much for sharing your creative insights and congratulations on the new book. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I am actually, absolutely, and I am actually one of those young people. | |
| I'm 29 years old, and I really appreciate what you do, first of all. | ||
| So what I was going to ask you about, following up what you were talking about earlier with the Build Back Better plan, you know, I found it interesting in the book when you were talking about that, when you were on your boat and you had all those protesters that peddled out to your boat and they were trying to have a conversation with you about the bill. | ||
| And, you know, you actually took the time to have that conversation saying that, you know, the bill had some good components to it, such as money for health care, infrastructure, and energy security, which are very important, but that it would supercharge inflation. | ||
| And then one of the protesters brought up that there should be higher taxes on billionaires. | ||
| And you agreed that we should be fixing the tax code so that everyone pays their fair share. | ||
| And to that, Mr. Manchin, there's this added dimension. | ||
| When you talk about polarization, I think one of the kind of root causes of that is inequity. | ||
| Whether that be, in this case, fiscal inequity or just feeling like people cannot get ahead no matter how hard they try. | ||
| And I think especially for younger people, that's the case. | ||
| And I think, you know, for an example of that, the cuts to Medicaid, you know, in Trump's big beautiful bill, while the top 20% of earners get these huge tax cuts while Medicaid is cut and people just feel like it's unfair in a way. | ||
| And I think, you know, we need to bridge that divide also. | ||
| And so my question is kind of how do you think we can assure that people don't feel as much of that inequity, which, you know, in essence leads to that polarization in the future. | ||
| Michael, thanks for the question. | ||
| There's a lot there, and I appreciate it. | ||
| Everyone should be incentivized in this great country to get ahead. | ||
| And that American dream should be achievable for all of us. | ||
| Let me give you the welfare system. | ||
| In my state, you know, an awful lot of people are dependent on assistance from the federal government. | ||
| We probably have one of the most dependent states that helps people, but I have my geographics as far as in my state and also my demographics, older population. | ||
| And these have all been hard workers. | ||
| They worked all their life and they haven't accumulated an awful lot of wealth and they depend on Medicare and Social Security. | ||
| A lot of them are on welfare and Medicaid. | ||
| And I said you need to change the welfare system. | ||
| The welfare system right now is a cliff. | ||
| You get to a certain amount. | ||
| I'm going to use hypothetically, I'll use $25,000. | ||
| If you have a family and you all have earnings up to $25,000 or less, you're going to be on Medicaid or welfare. | ||
| If you try to go above that, you start losing all your assistance that was given you under welfare. | ||
| And I've said this, why don't you create that cliff and change it to a slope? | ||
| Let a person who is working and wants to provide, but the system penalizes them if they get over a certain income or they have certain assets. | ||
| That should be encouraged to accumulate assets. | ||
| Have a home, have a car, be able to take care of yourself and give them some assistance as they work to a medium wage of the state you live in. | ||
| That would be the best investment we can make. | ||
| And the other thing is, I, as a governor, had welfare, and I asked for a waiver. | ||
| I told Mike Levitt at that time, who's DHA's chairman, he was the secretary, I says, Mike, I can't take care. | ||
| I don't have the money to take care of a healthy person who needs financial help, as I have a moral obligation to take care of someone who can't take care of themselves. | ||
| And you've got to give me a chance to encourage and educate and help people work themselves back into the work area. | ||
| So I got that, and they took it away from me when the Obama administration came in the first day. | ||
| They took my waiver away. | ||
| And I thought, you know, I'm just trying to incentivize and help people that can help themselves because I need to take care of those who couldn't. | ||
| All this is in a situation to where we have got to change our way of thinking. | ||
| And I'll tell you this. | ||
| When we did the Inflation Reduction Act, I felt that every corporation in America, especially the large corporation, should pay at least 15% taxes. | ||
| I felt that was fair. | ||
| The corporate tax rate was 21%. | ||
| You would think, well, Joe, why are you lowing it to 15%? | ||
| Well, I saw all the kind of things that could be done. | ||
| They're reduced way down into the single digits. | ||
| So we did that, and I caught crap from every side. | ||
| But the bottom line, everybody should pay their fair share. | ||
| I agree with that. | ||
| I'm almost to the point where I agree with a flat rate, whether it be 15 or 20%, whatever. | ||
| We all pay something to live in this great country, and we all have a vested interest. | ||
| When you buy something, now you have a vested interest. | ||
| You have to take care of that product you bought, whatever it is for you, your family, or whatever. | ||
| Well, when you're buying into this country, you maybe take care of it and get more involved. | ||
| We just have a few minutes left. | ||
| Let's get to a few more folks. | ||
| Susan is in Compton, California on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Susan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Hello, everyone. | ||
| Good morning, Mrs. Kimberly and Mr. Joe Manchin. | ||
| I'm Joe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Huh? | |
| I'm just Joe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What's up? | |
| Anyway, let me just say this. | ||
| Now, I know you're familiar with our wonderful. | ||
| I mean, he was the bomb, Mr. President Barack Obama. | ||
| He is nothing like Donald John Trump. | ||
| Why is Donald Donald Trump starting mess? | ||
| Why is he being messy? | ||
| And you, sir, you're supposed to be a Democrat. | ||
| You're supposed to stand up for us and say, look, Donald John Trump, stop it. | ||
| Okay, stop all the hate. | ||
| Start loving each other. | ||
| Let's start hugging each other, embracing one another. | ||
| I'm begging him. | ||
| I'm begging him to be the comforter in chief. | ||
| I have said it publicly everywhere I have been. | ||
| Mr. President, we need a leader that has the empathy and sympathy for all of us in difficult times. | ||
| This is a time for you to bring our country together. | ||
| He can do it. | ||
| One person can lead that. | ||
| And I think many will follow and they'll calm down the rhetoric. | ||
| I agree with you 1,000%. | ||
| And I'm trying to do everything I can to make sure. | ||
| I said, right now we need someone who can understand the heartaches and the misery that people are going through and how we can help them have a little bit of tranquility in their life, if you will, or not this anxiety that people have in them right now, thinking that either you're on my side or you're totally against me. | ||
| We've all got to be together. | ||
| In my little state of West Virginia, in my little town of Farmington, West Virginia, which is a little coal mining, we had to work together. | ||
| There were no social nets. | ||
| We held each other together because we loved each other. | ||
| We didn't agree with each other. | ||
| Families don't agree with each other. | ||
| But the love we have for this great country and each other should be absolutely something that is across the board, and no one should deny that. | ||
| Brenda is in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Brenda. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Hi. | ||
| I wanted to let him know, Mr. Manchin, that I have followed you through the years. | ||
| I'm a Republican, but I've admired you and the way that you have governed through the years. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And I also love watching C-SPAN. | ||
| But it hurts my heart when I see how the people have been reacting and our representatives and how they speak to each other. | ||
| Is there a way that we can recover the respect that you guys used to show each other? | ||
| Is there any way we can do that? | ||
| Yes, you can do it just by what you're saying right now. | ||
| Get involved. | ||
| Start talking. | ||
| My daughter and I, Heather Manchin, my daughter, started what we call Americanstogether.org. | ||
| It's a 501c4. | ||
| At Americanstogether.org, it'll tell you exactly what type of government you have, how you're able to be able to be what you want to be, and make sure the representatives you elect represent you and not themselves. | ||
| Hold people accountable. | ||
| They go there now and they can do and say anything they want to and come home and tell you how great things are. | ||
| They have a primary process that doesn't give you much of a choice. | ||
| It's not open. | ||
| It's controlled. | ||
| If you're an independent like me, I can't even vote in my state. | ||
| If I wanted to vote for a Republican in the primary in West Virginia, they've closed the primary down. | ||
| You have to be a registered Republican to vote in the Republican primary. | ||
| Well, wait a minute, that's not right. | ||
| And very quickly, what do you think of this mid-cycle redistricting effort that's going on? | ||
| Horrible. | ||
| Absolutely horrible. | ||
| What goes around comes around. | ||
| You have independent election commissions, okay, in redistricting. | ||
| And they're supposed to be independent. | ||
| They have Democrats and Republicans. | ||
| You should be drawing the lines. | ||
| Computers can do this better than anything else. | ||
| Computers can tell you, okay, we have economically, we have an economically balanced, we have geographically balanced, and we have people that are going to be represented by someone who is balanced. | ||
| But not when you can draw a line and just say, we just want Republicans or we just want Democrats. | ||
| That's going to push us further apart. | ||
| I hope that California rejects Proposition, I think they call it Proposition 50, something like that. | ||
| Anyway, they're trying to see if the people want to redistrict to retaliate against Texas. | ||
| And Missouri. | ||
| Missouri is also. | ||
| Missouri, too. | ||
| I think they'll all pay a price for that. | ||
| I think the people that are Democrats and Republicans maybe today, that's not right, could push back because they want to say, no, we're not going to let you take over that. | ||
| Carol is in West Virginia on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Carol. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, Joe. | |
| Hi, Carol. |