| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
For all three branches of coverpole. | |
| First of all, if you say hello, C-SPAN and how you all covered the hearings. | ||
| Thank you, everyone at C-SPAN, for allowing this interaction with everyday citizens. | ||
| It's an amazing show to get real opinions from real people. | ||
| Appreciate you guys' non-biased coverage. | ||
| I love politics, and I love C-SPAN because I get to hear all the voices. | ||
| You and C-SPAN show the truth. | ||
| Back to the universe for C-SPAN. | ||
| It's the one essential news network. | ||
| We will talk to Alex Gangitano. | ||
| She's a White House reporter for The Hill. | ||
| Alex, welcome. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thanks for having me. | |
| You wrote in The Hill the headline of your article is GOP hopes to make potential shutdown as painful for Dems as possible. | ||
| Talk about that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's right. | |
| So we're seeing a lot of rhetoric about from the White House, from the Republican side, that a shutdown would be the fault of Democrats, that Americans should blame only Democrats not wanting to come to the table to pass this clean CR that they're looking for in the event of a shutdown. | ||
| And actually, reviewing that ONB memo that you mentioned last night, that criticizes Democrats outright. | ||
| They say that Democrats have broken this tradition of this bipartisan trend, they say, of keeping the government open and instead have decided to make a series of insane demands to keep it open. | ||
| They also said that's important that administration prepares for a shutdown in the event that Democrats are choosing to pursue one. | ||
| So, you know, we're close to a midterm election. | ||
| This is always a big question that comes up when shutdowns are looming: of is the president going to be the person that's blamed for this? | ||
| Is the party in charge going to be the person that is blamed for this? | ||
| And they're really trying to preempt that and say that Democrats are the ones to blame here. | ||
| We also, you mentioned President Trump canceling that meeting. | ||
| He said, you know, it's not worth it to try to sit down with the likes of Schumer and Jeffries because of their, you know, what he claims are insane demands as well, what they're looking for. | ||
| So it's a lot of trying to kind of lay this groundwork for, you know, October 1 to veer Americans in a certain direction of how they want them to feel about this. | ||
| Now, how did the cancellation of that meeting come about? | ||
| Was because we're seeing reports that it was congressional Republican leadership that asked the president or encouraged the president to cancel. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's right. | |
| It was actually really interesting. | ||
| The president, he was up in New York at the time, and he said that he posted on his True Social that that meeting was canceled and why it was canceled. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And just moments, but basically saying that it's not worth it to argue with Republicans or with Democrats. | |
| But moments before that, we heard from Speaker Johnson on the Hill questioning the necessity of that meeting, saying that yes, he'd be a part of it, but I'm not sure if it's worth having the sit down. | ||
| But then we later heard that Majority Leader Thune had spoken to the president the night before. | ||
| So he was under pressure from GOP leadership who are basically telling him this is unnecessary. | ||
| The president had agreed to do this meeting after Schumer and Jeffries had asked for one. | ||
| And then he was at this position of he had all the cards in front of him that he could disinvite the Democratic leaders if he so pleased, which is exactly what he did. | ||
| And also another attempt of what we're talking about to say that Democrats are the one holding this up. | ||
| So why should I sit down and negotiate with them? | ||
| So it is all kind of part of that narrative that they're putting out there. | ||
| So do the president and Republicans feel like they have the upper hand in this negotiation and why would they feel that way? | ||
| Yeah, you know, again, that's always the tricky part for both parties is to try to place a shutdown blame on the other party. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But I think right now, Republicans are putting out that Democrats want these insane demands, that's a quote from them, in order to keep the government open. | |
| And they point to a lot of these really partisan matters, including transgender surgeries and these hot button issues that we've seen Republicans talk time and time again about Democrats really caring about. | ||
| Now, I say that to say that a lot of that is not what Democrats are looking for in this bill. | ||
| They're looking for some reversal of the Medicare cuts that we saw in the One Big Beautiful bill, for example. | ||
| But a lot of those, you know, Republicans are equating with some of these more partisan demands. | ||
| So I think just putting that narrative out there, we know the president has the largest bully pulpit in the world. | ||
| And so he's repetitively saying that these are why it's being held up. | ||
| This is why people will be furloughed or perhaps lose their jobs. | ||
| And it's all kind of a messaging campaign at this point. | ||
| In your article, you asked Senator Roger Marshall, a Republican of Kansas, about the shutdown's impact on his state. | ||
| And the quote that you have here is him saying, quote, I'd be much more worried if I were a blue state. | ||
| The president has a lot of discretionary power on what he declares is essential. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So does that mean that in the event of a shutdown, President Trump will attempt to withhold government services specifically from blue states? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Him suggesting that we found really interesting when writing this. | |
| And, you know, just the fact that he's pointing to the picking and choosing nature of this administration as well. | ||
| Of, you know, in the event of a catastrophic weather event, we have seen the president be more, you know, outright wanting to help a red state and put some more parameters around helping a blue state. | ||
| And I think referring to that is just the same kind of this administration can choose if I want to, you know, keep this help a state in a certain way. | ||
| Of course, you can't do much to keep a branch of HHS open or whatever else if there is no appropriated funding for that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And so, of course, we are in unprecedented times, how much we read into what kind of skirting the rules there'd be. | |
| But I think to his point, is there, you know, we've seen, and they're kind of outright saying it, that this White House will have the back of a red state in the event that this shutdown goes on for a long time and states need extra assistance, and a blue state would not have that kind of extra support. | ||
| And Alex, in other news, NBC is reporting that former FBI Director James Comey could be indicted in the next coming days. | ||
| Can you give an idea of what those criminal charges would be and what this is all about? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, it's really interesting. | |
| The president has, for a long time, called for charges against James Comey. | ||
| blames him for the investigation into his 2016 campaign and the conversations and meddling of the Russian government, something that the president has said is a witch hunt. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This comes just days after President Trump went on True Social and issued this really direct call to Attorney General Pam Bondi to indict. | |
| Comey. | ||
| Last Friday, he also had an attorney general for the Eastern District of Virginia step down because he was not making charges against another Trump foe who was a New York Attorney General Letitia James because that attorney was saying that there's not enough evidence to support allegations against James. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So it's all kind of this attorney was also overseeing the Comey case who's now been handed over to somebody else. | |
| So the groundwork has been laid here for any kind of criminal charges. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I think they would pursue it to your question about Comey's testimony to Congress and if there was any lies in that looking for anything they could get on him dating back to that testimony on the 2016 campaign. | |
| So we're kind of, it sounds like we're days away. | ||
| I think everybody's kind of bracing for it and DOJ. | ||
| You can watch this program in its entirety at our website, c-span.org. | ||
| We're going to leave it here for a discussion about gun violence with Congresswoman Lucy McBath and Reverend Al Sharpton. | ||
| It's part of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's annual legislative conference. | ||
| You're watching live coverage on C-SPAN. | ||
| Moving close. | ||
| Moving close. | ||
| Make room for others. | ||
| So anyway, thank you so much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm Congresswoman Lucy McBath. | |
| Very excited to have you with us today. | ||
| Thank you for being here. | ||
| I'm grateful for all of you who traveled to Washington this week. | ||
| Thank you for being with us. | ||
| But it is a complete honor to host everyone this year. |