| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
These events also stream live on the free C-SPAN Now video app and online at C-SPAN.org. | |
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| We're funded by these television companies and more, including Comcast. | ||
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| Coming up on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, we'll talk with Randy Irwin, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, about the impact of the government shutdown on his membership and federal workers. | ||
| And Breitbart News editor-in-chief Alex Marlow discusses his book, Breaking the Law, exposing the weaponization of America's legal system against Donald Trump and media coverage of the Trump presidency. | ||
| Washington Journal starts now. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| It's Tuesday, October 7th. | ||
| It's day seven of the government shutdown, with the major sticking point being the extension of Obamacare subsidies. | ||
| A fifth vote in the Senate failed yesterday on the House Republican CR. | ||
| The Democratic counterproposal also failed in the Senate. | ||
| Speaker has adjourned the House for this whole week. | ||
| Today also marks the anniversary of Hamas's attack on Israel two years ago. | ||
| With this first hour, we focus on the government shutdown. | ||
| We'll get your thoughts and reaction by phone, text, or social media. | ||
| Here are the phone numbers. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| We also have a line set aside for federal workers. | ||
| That number is 202-748-8003. | ||
| You can also use that same line to text us. | ||
| Include your first name in your city-state if you do. | ||
| And we're on social media, facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and X at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Welcome to today's two-hour Washington Journal. | ||
| We'll start with the Wall Street Journal with this news. | ||
| Trump opened to healthcare talks with Democrats to end shutdown. | ||
| It says since the government shutdown began, Democrats and Republicans have been at an impasse overextending Obamacare subsidies. | ||
| President Trump signaled a willingness to strike a deal on funding health care subsidies demanded by Democrats, putting a spotlight on nascent efforts on Capitol Hill to end the government shutdown. | ||
| Take a look at what the president said yesterday in the Oval Office. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The government will shut down, Mr. President. | |
| It could. | ||
| At some point, it will. | ||
| And, you know, the Democrats are the ones that started this. | ||
| And if you think about it, it's about health care to a large extent. | ||
| It's about we want great health care for people. | ||
| We don't want to give the money away to other people that come pouring into our country. | ||
| And they've already poured because nobody's coming into our country. | ||
| Now we have the border totally stopped. | ||
| In fact, numbers we just announced again were at another zero. | ||
| So we have zero for four months in a row. | ||
| Zero people coming into our country illegally. | ||
| That's a pretty good number. | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| Even I can believe that, Doug, if you want to know the truth, zero. | ||
| Went from millions of people to zero, but it's pretty close to that number. | ||
| And we, the way you stop them is not to give away, not to announce that you're giving everybody free health care, free this and that. | ||
| But what that does is it affects the American people because the American people are unable to get good health care. | ||
| Obamacare has been a wreck, as you know. | ||
| And to do that, we have to keep it propped up and do the best you can with it. | ||
| It's a mess. | ||
| But things are a lot of things are going on in that. | ||
| You know, we talk about Hamas. | ||
| Now we talk about negotiations that we have going on right now. | ||
| We have a negotiation going on right now with the Democrats that could lead to very good things. | ||
| And I'm talking about good things with regard to health care. | ||
| And here is Politico that says this. | ||
| Schumer denies bipartisan health care talks after Trump's Oval Office claim. | ||
| It says that the top Senate Democrats said, quote, we'll be at the table if the president wants to negotiate. | ||
| He said yesterday that there are no pending bipartisan talks over expiring health insurance subsidies despite a claim from President Donald Trump. | ||
| And we'll go to the calls now. | ||
| Doug is in Fairfax, South Dakota. | ||
| Democrat, good morning, Doug. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning, Mimi. | |
| I am hoping that the Democrats stick with this and don't open the government because you know they're not going to do nothing about the health care. | ||
| They have wanted to get rid of health care forever. | ||
| And they keep going out about immigrants all getting this health care, which is probably true on the emergency room. | ||
| There was some other little deal. | ||
| This lady you had on there a while back told us all, so we all should know this and actually all. | ||
| But the way Christie, the dog killer, is going around us getting rid of all these immigrants, they're not going to have to worry about no immigrants here pretty soon because they're not going to be none around for one thing. | ||
| And what they should do is, when is it actually supposed to be passed? | ||
|
unidentified
|
In March? | |
| But anyway, they should charge these people like a $200 penalty. | ||
| I used to work Rogue Instruction. | ||
| And if you ever drove on the Interstate 90, 80 or 70 through the states of Kansas, South Dakota, and Nebraska, you probably drove on work I did. | ||
| But if we would get a job done early, sometimes we'd get a bonus. | ||
| But if we didn't get a job done in time, we'd be penalized. | ||
| So these politicians should be penalized, like 200 bucks a day or maybe divide what days you have left into their pay. | ||
| And every day they're not there, they should be deducted that pay, in my opinion. | ||
| And this Gaza deal, they're not going to get nothing going there because I think that 21 started out a 21-point plan by the TBN or that religious channel, but now I think it's changed quite a bit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And Benjamin kind of rewrote it, I believe. | |
| But I hope they do. | ||
| We got your point. | ||
| Julie is in Potomac, Maryland, Independent Line. | ||
| Hi, Julie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, how are you today? | |
| Good. | ||
| I support the government shutdown 100%. | ||
| Only thing you need to do is go to DOJ website. | ||
| 12 employees stole $550 million from USAID. | ||
| One employee stole $100 million from the U.S. Army. | ||
| I solely support the government shutdown. | ||
| The health care crisis, I hope the Republican Party stands their ground, keep the government shut down. | ||
| I do not agree with the Democrat Party. | ||
| Hold on, Julie. | ||
| You were saying the Department of Justice website has this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, then you need to go to the DOJ website. | |
| The thievery is unbelievable. | ||
| The amounts of money that was stolen from the federal government from employees that actually work there. | ||
| Only thing you have to do is go to DOJ website, salute the Department of Justice, and you will see all the money that was stolen over a short period of time. | ||
| One lady, Janet Millio, stole $100 million from the U.S. Army in a six-year period. | ||
| Who signed off on all of that? | ||
| Where were the people that were in place? | ||
| And Julie, you're seeing this on the DOJ website, so justice.gov. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Public knowledge. | |
| Yes, it's public knowledge. | ||
| They just were sentenced to 10 years in prison. | ||
| And they said. | ||
| Okay, okay, we'll look into that. | ||
| Let's go to Jim in Cairo, Missouri. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| The Republicans don't care about health care. | ||
| Neither does Trump. | ||
| Shut down, a bad deal. | ||
| I don't see any way out of it. | ||
| What comes to mind, though, is the phrase: deconstruct the administrative state, destroy the system. | ||
| What better way to destroy the system than to shut it down, pull the plug, defund it, unman it? | ||
| Trump is now a dictator. | ||
| Why would he reopen the government and be subject to oversight again? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And here's Chris, Washington, D.C., Independent Line. | ||
| Hi, Chris. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, yeah. | |
| You know, the Republicans have been shutting the government down since January 20th. | ||
| I mean, this right here is just a cherry on top for them. | ||
| They've been cutting the federal workforce since Trump came back into office. | ||
| And my thing is: like, where's all the money that our president has been saying has been coming in? | ||
| The billions and billions and billions of dollars in tariffs, this $17 trillion that he said is come in in one year. | ||
| If that was actually the case, then why are we shutting the government down and not repositioning that money as should be done, as they claim that they were doing from the beginning? | ||
| I mean, I feel very bad for people who work for the federal government. | ||
| And of course, you know, there could be efficiency. | ||
| There can be efficiency in everything and every aspect of life. | ||
| You know, there's waste, yes. | ||
| Fraud and abuse, yes. | ||
| But there's a way to go about correcting that, just like with any business or anything else. | ||
| So all of this is just a sham and a way for Trump and his administration to gain more control and more power. | ||
| It's very unfortunate for the American people. | ||
| A lot of people are going to suffer. | ||
| So, Chris, do you think that the shutdown should continue, or what are your thoughts about the shutdown itself? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I believe the shutdown should continue. | |
| And I think that the Democrats are making a mistake with their messaging. | ||
| We know that just through their actions, that the extreme conservatives don't care about middle-class, working-class people in their health care because of how they've impacted the agencies and the systems that provide that for the American people. | ||
| The Social Security, the Medicare, the Medicaid, they're all being restricted. | ||
| And for what? | ||
| Because the money that they're saving on that or proposing to save is just a drop in the bucket of what we really need. | ||
| So I'm for letting the government shut down. | ||
| I think that the Democrats should look, if they really want to make a message, just tell the people about how all the jobs are disappearing, how it's impacting the economy, how all of this shutdown that the Republicans are forcing is impacting the American people. | ||
| All right, Chris. | ||
| And Juliet mentioned some information on DOJ. | ||
| So here it is. | ||
| If you go to justice.gov under their public affairs press release, here's the headline. | ||
| USAID official and three corporate executives plead guilty to decade-long bribery scheme involving over $550 million in contracts. | ||
| Two companies admit criminal liability for bribery scheme and securities fraud. | ||
| It says that four men, including a government contracting officer for the USAID and three owners and presidents of companies, have pleaded guilty for their roles in a decade-long bribery scheme involving at least 14 prime contracts worth over $550 million in U.S. taxpayer dollars. | ||
| That's at justice.gov. | ||
| And here is Lindsay, Chicago, Illinois, Independent. | ||
| Good morning, Lindsay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I think that it's really important that Americans have access to free health care. | ||
| I'm happy that the Democrats are standing their ground in fight of this, but I do want to address the fact that American taxpayer dollars are spending money for Israel to have free health care and to have access to health and physicians and their doctors and have access to paternity leave, maternity leave, and a check every month for that baby. | ||
| So why aren't Americans having this same access to free health care like Israel is where all our taxpayer money is going to? | ||
| Here is President Trump's posting on Truth Social. | ||
| He says, Democrats have shut down the United States government right in the midst of one of the most successful economies, including a record stock market that our country has ever had. | ||
| This has sadly affected so many programs, services, and other elements of society that Americans rely on, and it should not have happened. | ||
| I am happy to work with the Democrats on their failed health care policies or anything else. | ||
| But first, they must allow our government to reopen. | ||
| In fact, they should open our government tonight. | ||
| That was sent yesterday at 6.52 p.m. in the evening. | ||
| Here is House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries responding to the President's remarks yesterday. | ||
| Take a look. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He also seemed to suggest that, well, he said something to the effect of we're talking to Democrats. | |
| So A, have you had any conversations as of late with the president or the White House and B, what do you make of his willingness maybe to strike a deal here? | ||
| Well, the White House has gone radio silent since the Oval Office meeting last Monday, and neither Leader Schumer or myself have heard a word from the administration about resolving this issue, making clear to us that the White House wanted to shut the government down to continue the chaos that they've been inflicting on the American people since day one of this presidency. | ||
| It's an interesting statement that the president has made, and I think both House and Senate Democrats are clear. | ||
| We'll sit down anytime, any place with anyone from your administration, including the president, to get a resolution here with respect to the Affordable Care Act tax credits, which need to be extended right now, as well as dealing with and addressing the Republican health care crisis that is devastating everyday Americans all across the country. | ||
| And this is Daryl, Independent, North Carolina. | ||
| Hi, Daryl. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, how are you doing this morning? | |
| I really think the way that we're going about this government shutdown, especially the leading administration, they're being a bit disingenuous. | ||
| They mentioned the focus for the bill being illegal immigrants receiving health care or receiving some type of medical care. | ||
| If they really want to reduce or prevent that from happening, they will focus on the Hippocratic oath that medical providers take when they become medical providers. | ||
| That's what causes them to actually provide health care for them. | ||
| They can't not provide health care in the emergency room for someone who comes in for an emergency because of the Hippocratic Oath. | ||
| And no one has mentioned that. | ||
| And I believe that's why it's disingenuous. | ||
| The Democrats, they're using their only negotiating tactic that they have being that they have no type of authority in this current administration, whether it's judiciary, whether it's legislative or executive. | ||
| I think the invisible force branch of government, which is the people of the United States, needs to take a stand and start from scratch. | ||
| If this goes beyond 20 days, we need to invoke a new rule of law. | ||
| Hey, government resets if they can't get a government running in 30 days. | ||
| All of you are a failure. | ||
| Anybody within the administration, within the federal government, should be removed from the court judges to the legislator to everybody in Congress. | ||
| Get out of there. | ||
| We can reset because you obviously can't get anything done. | ||
| And Daryl mentioned emergency room treatment. | ||
| So that's covered under a law in the U.S. called EMTALA. | ||
| So it's the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. | ||
| And this law helps prevent any hospital emergency department that receives Medicare funds, which includes most U.S. hospitals, from refusing to treat patients. | ||
| So this is CMS.gov, which is Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. | ||
| You can take a look at that. | ||
| You have these protections in an emergency room, which include an appropriate medical screening exam to check for an emergency medical condition. | ||
| And if you have one, treatment until your emergency medical condition is stabilized or an appropriate transfer to another hospital if you need it. | ||
| So that is a law called Emtala Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. | ||
| Here's David North Tazewell, Virginia, Republican. | ||
| Good morning, David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I just have an observation and a question is all. | ||
| Besides the lies of the Affordable Care Act, whenever it was enacted, close to 15 million Americans lost their health care provider, their health care coverage due to the Obamacare. | ||
| My question is: if the Affordable Care Act is affordable and it is what this country needs, why do we have to subsidize it with taxpayer money due to the high cost? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Dutch Boston Democrat, good morning, Dutch. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, well, I just want to make a follow-up what this guy said about that affordable health care. | |
| The thing is that Trump enacted this health care thing with Obama since he left office money. | ||
| He's trying to get it again. | ||
| The guy from Phoenix, Arizona, the senator down there, the one that died not too long ago, put a thumbs down on that because he knows there was nothing but garbage anyway that he was trying to mess with this health care thing. | ||
| John McCain. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The thing is, John McCain. | |
| And the thing is that he's trying to take this country apart. | ||
| These people need to wake up out here. | ||
| I mean, he's messing with colleges, you know, all these different governments. | ||
| I mean, this guy shouldn't have control of all these different mergers and all this stuff that's going on in this country. | ||
| His whole family, he kept calling the Biden client family. | ||
| He's the one that got the Klein family. | ||
| I mean, if the media get on this case, this guy's got his two sons out there running for the company in his world trying to get hotels and a lot of stuff. | ||
| And the guy posted and went to Saudi Vegas talking about he's going to do stuff when the United States went down and made a deal with this golf thing with the Saudi Vegas where they could come in here and invest all kinds of money for him to make, not for the United States to make. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| He went down there early in his career. | ||
| You know, when his president could be helping this guy that got assassinated down there, he's caught himself getting married. | ||
| So he don't care about this guy. | ||
| And this guy in Saudi Vegas is killed people who says anything. | ||
| He's talking about free speech. | ||
| That's free speech that's done in Saudi Arabia. | ||
| They kill you when you're like Russia's the same way. | ||
| Made a fool out of himself, too. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And this is Richard, a Republican in Minneapolis, Minnesota. | ||
| Hi, Richard. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| You know, I'm a Republican, but I'm about to vote Democratic in the upcoming election. | ||
| This guy is a knucklehead. | ||
| Notice I'm not saying some of the other terrible words. | ||
| But, yeah, the Republicans are losing on this issue because, you know, everybody wants health care. | ||
| And, you know, the farmers are losing 85 cents a bushel on corn, and they're losing about $1.20 on soybeans. | ||
| We're going back to the 80s where they had so many foreclosures, thousands of farmers went out of business. | ||
| That's, you know, this guy has got the whole economy turned upside down. | ||
| China is not buying any soybeans. | ||
| So, Richard, what do you think of the shutdown? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's terrible. | |
| The Democrats are winning. | ||
| You know, they're putting out the message and, you know, Johnson, he's lying through his teeth. | ||
| You can just look at him and tell him, see how Johnson is lying. | ||
| So you think that the Republicans will eventually negotiate and give the Democrats something on the extension of the health care subsidies? | ||
| You think that's what's going to happen? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm pretty sure. | |
| Well, you just ran a piece a few minutes ago that Trump was ready to negotiate. | ||
| So he'll tell Johnson to, you know, get in line. | ||
| You know, they're all kissing his ring and kissing everything else on him. | ||
| All right, let's talk to Connie in Tacoma, Washington on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, Connie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yes, the reason I'm calling is I wanted just to remind everybody about when the Affordable Care Act was first came out, the idea was that all states would have to sign up with that on the Affordable Care Act. | ||
| And something happened before it was made law that allowed the states an out. | ||
| And that impacted the cost overall of what you could purchase on that website. | ||
| So the idea of its conception, it never was fully developed to the plan it was laid out to be under Obama. | ||
| I met with, it was either a representative or a senator from Kansas when they came back to talk to their constituents about it when they were placing that vote. | ||
| And I happen to be a dual citizen with Canada and I'm very familiar with their social insurance program up there. | ||
| And we talked about it. | ||
| And it would have been so successful if it had been carried out the way it had been planned. | ||
| So for all of you people that are complaining about Obamacare right now, go back to when it was first inception of that and what the states were supposed to do and where they fell short because it impacted me. | ||
| I moved from Kansas to Washington State and I enjoy the marketplace on the Washington State website that I'm able to access. | ||
| I know people that are signed up on that. | ||
| Now, Kansas does not have a very good program. | ||
| They didn't have to buy in, and they didn't. | ||
| So it depends on where you live, on what you have access to. | ||
| And unfortunately, the Republicans blocked all of the states from that being mandatory for them to come on board. | ||
| So I just wanted to set the story straight on that. | ||
| I appreciate that, Connie. | ||
| And Marjorie Taylor Greene sent out a posting on X about this topic. | ||
| She said, I won't read you the whole thing, but it says, I was not in Congress when all this Obamacare Affordable Care Act started. | ||
| As a matter of fact, the ACA made health insurance unaffordable for my family after it was passed with skyrocket premiums. | ||
| She says, I'm not a fan, but I'm going to go against everyone on this issue because when the tax credits expire this year, my own adult children's insurance premiums for 2026 are going to double, along with all the wonderful families and hardworking people in my district. | ||
| No, I'm not towing the party line on this or playing loyalty games. | ||
| I'm a Republican and won't vote for illegals to have any taxpayer-funded health care or benefits. | ||
| She says, I'm carving my own lane, and I'm absolutely disgusted that health insurance premiums will double if the tax credits expire. | ||
| She says, also, I think health insurance and all insurance is a scam, just to be clear. | ||
| She says, not a single Republican in leadership talked to us about this or has given us a plan to help Americans deal with their health insurance premiums doubling. | ||
| She says, it is absolutely shameful, disgusting, traders, that our laws and policies screw the American people so much that the government is shut down right now, fighting over basic issues like this. | ||
| She says, I'm here in Washington, D.C. this week to meet with anyone who is America only and will work with me on a plan for Americans only. | ||
| That's Marjorie Taylor Greene on a post on X. Alex in Delaware, a Republican. | ||
| Hi, Alex. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, yeah, I was wondering, because Affordable Care Act, what's affordable about? | |
| Everybody's complaining about how high the prices are. | ||
| It's corruption or something going on. | ||
| And they said you could have your own doctor and all, and they brought it out. | ||
| And they found out that was a lie. | ||
| It should have been shut down right then and there. | ||
| And they're charging people money out of their taxes for not joining up on there. | ||
| And they did away with that after a few years. | ||
| I mean, this ain't nothing but a bunch of corruption going on. | ||
| And it needs to be taken out completely and put a new plan in. | ||
| The Affordable Care Act is not affordable. | ||
| And that's so stupid to say that. | ||
| And that's like the reduction plan that they had about inflation reduction. | ||
| It was no inflation reduction. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Oh, I heard you. | ||
| And this is Edward, Independent in West Virginia. | ||
| Hi, Edward. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for letting me in on this. | |
| I'm 90 years old. | ||
| I never had a job over $3 an hour, so I never had any hospitalization. | ||
| I think the government ought to help us with hospitalization up to a certain point. | ||
| The hospital emergency rooms have a lot of people in there. | ||
| They've got a headache. | ||
| They spud their toe. | ||
| Stuff like this. | ||
| That's not emergency. | ||
| I just want to say I think they ought to get both of them to get back in there, get something done, and put an end to this crap. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| And on the line for Democrats in Salisbury, North Carolina, Lewis, you're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Top of the morning to everyone. | |
| Thank you, C-SPAN. | ||
| Look, first of all, I just want to say this about Obamacare. | ||
| Obamacare got rid of the pre-existing condition. | ||
| Y'all forget. | ||
| They're trying to clear Obamacare from the heels and to eliminate it. | ||
| And it would have worked perfectly if the Republicans didn't throw monkey wrenches in it. | ||
| But that's not what I want to talk about. | ||
| That's what I want to talk about. | ||
| The Republicans have the right right now to open up the government without the Democrats at all. | ||
| All they have to do is end the filibuster. | ||
| They have enough. | ||
| Now, ask yourself why they don't eliminate the filibuster. | ||
| I tell you why. | ||
| Because then the doors will open and Elfstein files will come right out again. | ||
| They want to keep the government down because they don't want to talk about the Elfstein files. | ||
| People, y'all better wake up. | ||
| The Republicans shut it down, and the Republicans can open it up right now. | ||
| They got enough, 53. | ||
| All they need is 50. | ||
| And the vice president, 51. | ||
| So you tell me why the Republicans don't end the filibuster to open up the government. | ||
| Ask them. | ||
| Republicans, y'all better wake up, man, because y'all sleeping. | ||
| Thank you, C-SPAN. | ||
| And regarding the Epstein files, Attorney General Pam Bondi will be in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee later today. | ||
| That's happening at 9 o'clock right here on C-SPAN. | ||
| She will likely face questions about the Epstein files and also the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey. | ||
| You can watch that right after this program, starting at 9 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| Steve in Massachusetts is a Republican. | ||
| Hi, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how are you doing today? | |
| Good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I want to talk about your premise of the emergency rooms with illegal immigrants coming in. | |
| And I just want to say, like, let's say if an illegal immigrant comes in and she's pregnant and she's bleeding and she has to have a preemie, would they deliver that in the emergency room? | ||
| Where's that baby delivered? | ||
| And how about if an illegal comes in with appendicitis and he needs his appendix out? | ||
| They're going to have his appendix taken out in the emergency room. | ||
| So I think that it's a lie or miscommunication that just emergency rooms get used. | ||
| And also, you look at the 300,000 Venezuelans that have temporary protected status, not anymore, because the Supreme Court made it that they don't. | ||
| All of them had health care, okay? | ||
| And people say that, you know, the illegals don't have Social Security. | ||
| They don't have their Social Security, but they get stopped and they have five different Social Security cards on. | ||
| So I just think that it's like just a non-truth saying that they aren't in, you know? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And here is John in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, Independent Line. | ||
| Hi, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm kind of a right-wing independent. | |
| I agree with the shutdown so far. | ||
| You've got to stand firm on your principles. | ||
| It was a properly passed and enacted law under the Obama administration that it would be a temporary extension of subsidies. | ||
| And that temporary subsidy time is now over. | ||
| And we need to just move on with it. | ||
| I just checked my insurance yesterday, and it's going to go up by about $50 a month. | ||
| Are you on Obamacare? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm on a private insurance company after a private retiree plan, actually. | |
| So I'm a fortunate person who had insurance through my job. | ||
| I wonder where Marjorie Taylor Greene's adult children work if they don't have health insurance through their employer, if they're waitresses or waiters or what they do for a living. | ||
| And one other comment was the person from Washington who lived in Kansas and then moved to Washington to get a better rate. | ||
| Well, that's what people need to do: they need to move. | ||
| If you're not happy with where you're at or what you're doing, you need to move. | ||
| And it goes the same way as far as with the president and the country. | ||
| If you're not happy here, move. | ||
| She came from Canada. | ||
| And I know somebody when I was working who married an American and moved from Canada down here because their health system was great for the first five years, he said, and then they started rationing it when the money got short, single-payer health plans. | ||
| So I don't agree with that at all. | ||
| I get on Medicare in three more years, I believe it is, or somewhere about that. | ||
| So I just think I'm happy with what's going on and stand firm, Republicans, and don't pass this extension again of subsidy. | ||
| All right, John. | ||
| And on the Republican line, South Carolina, Betty, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I just want to say Donald Trump ain't the one that shut down the government. | |
| It was the Democrats. | ||
| And I voted Democrat when Bill Clinton was in there. | ||
| And he's a good president. | ||
| The only thing he does is he passed the trade deal. | ||
| And if people think back a long time ago, when the presidents before Barack Obama came in, you didn't see all this that's going on now. | ||
| It started when the Democrat Biden came in. | ||
| He canceled everything that Donald Trump had done. | ||
| Even the Keystone pipeline, he canceled everything, the wall, the everything. | ||
| So when he come in, he's doing a darn good job to me. | ||
| He's doing for the American people. | ||
| They're mad because the Berkeley people didn't vote for him, and they cut out their goodies. | ||
| They were getting rich because all they want is money. | ||
| Money, money, money, money. | ||
| And I'm a taxpayer. | ||
| I'm just 80 years low, going on 81. | ||
| And I ain't wanting to pay for the Democrats to spend my tax money on illegals. | ||
| If they won't come in, that's fine. | ||
| As long as they go to work and they pay taxes, just like I did all my life. | ||
| All right, buddy. | ||
| Take a look at previous government shutdowns going back to 1990 under the first President Bush had one shutdown. | ||
| President Clinton had two shutdowns in 1995 and 95 to 96. | ||
| President Obama had a shutdown in 2013. | ||
| President Trump in 2018 for three days and then again for 35 days over the Christmas and New Year's holidays in 2018 to 2019. | ||
| That was the longest one in recent memory. | ||
| There were no shutdowns under the Biden administration, and now we are in one again. | ||
| Those are some information for you that's on history.house.gov if you'd like to look into the history there. | ||
| Here's Evelyn, Baltimore, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Evelyn. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, good morning. | |
| I was calling in, and everybody talked about Medicare. | ||
| I receive Medicare. | ||
| I pay for my Medicare monthly, so it's not like I'm getting it free. | ||
| And as far as the shutdown is concerned, I want somebody to tell me why the President, the Senate, the House, his cabinet, all these people are governor workers, government workers. | ||
| Why aren't their salaries cut? | ||
| It don't make no sense. | ||
| Cut their salary, too. | ||
| They all sitting up there, all these rich people, they don't need Medicaid, they don't need anything because they have all that money. | ||
| So why don't you cut their salaries? | ||
| They're sitting up there like they're kings and queens, and then everybody at the bottom is suffering. | ||
| Y'all have a nice day. | ||
| Dave in Wilmington, South Carolina, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Dave. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I hope you give me time, just a little bit of time to explain. | ||
| I've been studying this a long time, and I think I have something that would explain a lot about that. | ||
| Let's take the Democrats at their word that the shutdown is due to the inability to agree on the health care problem. | ||
| So let's been talking about health care. | ||
| What we have, it's not about race. | ||
| It's not about parties. | ||
| I'm talking about we have a real structural problem with the cost of health care. | ||
| And unless the structure changes, it's going to only get worse. | ||
| Let me explain. | ||
| You understand the law of supply and demand and its effect on prices of goods, correct? | ||
| So we have private providers work in basically a private system. | ||
| We don't have socialized medicine where doctors work for the government. | ||
| It's private industry. | ||
| We have a limited supply of services. | ||
| There's just so many doctors, so many hospitals, but we have a greatly increased demand for their goods. | ||
| We have an aging population in America, and then we have a brand new population in the last few years of millions of people, most of whom are uninsured. | ||
| Do you agree with that? | ||
| So we have a limited supply of doctors. | ||
| We have a greatly increased demand, which is only going to get worse as America ages. | ||
| But we have an unlimited supply of money because of the Great Society Acts. | ||
| Federal government can borrow. | ||
| So as long as the providers keep raising prices and we cover people through government, the government has to borrow. | ||
| You're familiar with our federal debt. | ||
| And that's going to get worse and worse and worse as the cost of medical care goes up because of the structure of what we have. | ||
| So it's fixed in stone. | ||
| Until we change the structure, this is going to happen. | ||
| And the only kind of solutions we have, if we did single payer, that's not good because you're going to force providers to accept less money, and you're really going to have a mess in the problem. | ||
| The better solution is to have more providers and have them have medical care free of the excess cost due to insurance and malpractice insurance and or third-party payment, medical insurance. | ||
| All right, Dave. | ||
| And let's take a look at Senate Majority Leader John Thune on the Senate floor yesterday urging Senate Democrats to vote for the House Pass CR. | ||
| So to summarize, Democrats have shut down the government because they refused to accept a clean, nonpartisan bill. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And why are they refusing to accept it? | |
| After all, as I mentioned, they supported similar bills 13 times during the Biden administration. | ||
| The reason that they refused to accept it is that Democrats still cannot get over the fact that the American people elected President Trump. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And when their far-left base demanded a showdown with the president, Democrats fell in line. | |
| And now it's the American people who are suffering the consequences. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I quote again, U.S. government shutdown threatens food aid program for low-income Americans. | |
| Threatens food aid program for low-income Americans. | ||
| Mr. President, three Democrats have rejected their party shutdown politics and voted with Republicans to reopen the government. | ||
| All Democrats will get another chance to vote to reopen the government later today. | ||
| And for the sake of the American people, I hope at least a few more Democrats will join us to pass this clean, nonpartisan CR and let the Senate get back to work. | ||
| And the Senate did vote. | ||
| It was 52 to 42 on that. | ||
| They do need 60 votes to get past the filibuster, so that measure failed. | ||
| Here is John in Florence, Massachusetts, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| The Affordable Care Act was never affordable. | ||
| Democrats had subsidies that were supposed to expire, and Republicans said at the time that the ACA was unsustainable. | ||
| And Obama shut down the government for 16 days to force Obamacare in 2013, but we don't talk about that shutdown that hurt Americans. | ||
| Those subsidies would have never been extended if it wasn't for Biden, Schumer, and Pelosi for COVID. | ||
| This wouldn't have happened in 2021. | ||
| As Republicans said the whole time, it's unsustainable. | ||
| Americans can't afford health care, but you think illegal aliens are paying for their own health care? | ||
| That's a great fairy tale that should be told by mother goose. | ||
| Obama is just, it's just absolutely ridiculous. | ||
| All right. | ||
| In Canada, Roderick is on the line. | ||
| Good morning, Roderick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for having me on. | ||
| My condolences to your country for the traumas it's going through. | ||
| Your health care outcomes are worse than Canada's, although your country spends more than twice as much per person countrywide than we do. | ||
| We have a system where there is just a single payer. | ||
| You don't. | ||
| Many of your population are quoted in the news media saying that they are frustrated with the insurance racket across your country. | ||
| My suggestion to your politicians and my urging to your politicians is make part of your continuing resolution a small amount of money to pay for a countrywide plebiscite. | ||
| Ask your population, all Americans that have voting rights, do you prefer your country becoming a single payer nation where there is one pot of money that pays for health care countrywide, or do you want to remain with the current system of hundreds of independent insurance companies, in the words of many, ripping off the health care recipients? | ||
| If such a plebiscite was conducted, I presume this would stiffen the spines of many of your congresspersons and the president of the United States and his cabinet to doing the right thing. | ||
| Whereas currently it appears, at least from the news media, very often politicians, elected members of the House and Senate and the President are in effect being wagged, the dog being wagged by the tail, the tail being the insurance companies and their enormous lobbying funds. | ||
| So why not ensure that the continuing resolution, I shouldn't say why, put a small of money into the continuing resolution bill that will pay for a countrywide plebiscite to ask voters across the country, your country, do they want your country to shift into a single payer system, which would cost half as much per person if it's similar to Canada's, or do they want to remain with the current system? | ||
| Got it, Roderick. | ||
| Here's Jared Delaware, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, Jared. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, how are you? | |
| So before I say what I want to say, I just want to remind Americans that two years ago, there was a horrible attack in Israel and subsequentially a genocide perpetuated in Palestine. | ||
| So don't forget that today. | ||
| As far as the shutdown is concerned, I want Americans to understand something, that it really is an us versus them thing. | ||
| What we can see here is that the Republicans and Democrats are both willing to shut down the government and harm different sets of Americans for different reasons. | ||
| They're not going through normal legislation to pass these laws because they can't agree and pass it with normal votes. | ||
| So they're shoving them all down our face in these CRs and these budget resolutions. | ||
| And they can't get along. | ||
| 60, 70% of Americans, we agree in mostly everything. | ||
| It's the fringes that are having these fights, and they've both co-opted the Democrats and Republicans in Washington to go along with these things. | ||
| What the ACA is, was a way for Americans who couldn't afford health care or have health care to then get health care that's subsidized by the U.S. government and taxpayers, yes, but also it was lower cost and didn't cover as much. | ||
| Therefore, it actually lowered prices for Americans across the board with their premiums. | ||
| So again, both parties are willing to attack and demean particular segments of the American people, whether it be the farmers, whether it be low-income, whether it be immigrants, you know, and they're willing to demean Hispanics and again, non-Americans in different ways. | ||
| Obama deported a lot of people. | ||
| Trump is doing it in a different manner, but still deporting a lot of people. | ||
| Obama bombed a lot of nations. | ||
| People, please wake up. | ||
| It's not them. | ||
| It's not Republicans versus Democrats. | ||
| It's really just us versus them. | ||
| And listen to the guy from Canada. | ||
| I understand America has a big history with these paying taxes. | ||
| But again, if the taxes were used correctly, if we voted the right people into these places of power and people who were really responsible to their constituents and not just a particular segment that would keep them in power in their little district, we would get a lot more done in the country. | ||
| We would be a lot more united, not just in our hearts and will be past each other, but again, in poverty, we could really eliminate a lot of this poverty. | ||
| All right, Jerry. | ||
| On the Republican line in Mountain Home, Arkansas, Joel, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are we doing this morning? | ||
| Good. | ||
| You should have showed, what's his name? | ||
| I've got a senior woman. | ||
| He was a president from California. | ||
| He shut the government down a long time, a Republican. | ||
| Now, I got the first question. | ||
| Why are we taking calls from Canada? | ||
| They don't have any say-so in this. | ||
| Their government's not shut down, and they don't pay taxes. | ||
| But I asked the person that took my call, and she told me to ask you that, okay? | ||
| But you just took a call from Canada. | ||
| They don't have no say-so in this. | ||
| Now, I tell you what screwed our country up: allowing these illegals to come through the southern border for the last 10 years. | ||
| We got 15 million illegals here. | ||
| And all these Democrat cities that are, what do you call them, Treasure Island, come here and get your benefits and everything. | ||
| And we just can't keep paying this. | ||
| They don't have housing for our people now. | ||
| They don't have housing for our veterans. | ||
| They don't, it's just mind-bottom. | ||
| You can't take 15 million people in and everything. | ||
| And I tell you, it's shameful, very shameful, that our military, they defend this country. | ||
| They're in these cities defending these cities. | ||
| They're not getting paid. | ||
| That is shameful. | ||
| I'm a veteran. | ||
| I'm a 23-year-old veteran, and I'm a civil service retirement. | ||
| I'm not hurting. | ||
| I'm 83 years old. | ||
| I feel sorry for these people. | ||
| Now, all these restaurants need to put a sign up and say, if you, a veteran, come in and take out a meal and feed your veterans, and they have proof that they are. | ||
| But this is shameful. | ||
| I'm so sorry, buddy. | ||
| Got it, Joel. | ||
| And let's take a look at Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer pushing back on Republicans saying that they're trying to give health care to illegal immigrants. | ||
| Saying that Democrats' proposal provides health insurance to undocumented immigrants is plain and simple, a blatant lie. | ||
| It was a lie yesterday. | ||
| It's a lie today. | ||
| It'll be a lie tomorrow. | ||
| Nothing in our proposal, not even the page the speaker keeps citing, changes that, as fact-checkers have repeatedly pointed out, independent fact-checkers, not Democrats, not Republicans, just experts. | ||
| Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for Medicaid, Medicare, or ACA credits under current law or under the Democratic Continuing Resolution proposal. | ||
| It's been the law for decades. | ||
| Instead, here's what Democrats want to do: We want to reverse the devastating cuts to American health care that Republicans passed in their big, ugly bill. | ||
| We want to extend the ACA tax credits that lower costs for eligible Americans. | ||
| These are the plain facts. | ||
| But Speaker Johnson and Republicans don't want to deal with the facts. | ||
| They don't want to talk about health care because they know the American people are appalled by their health care policies. | ||
| So instead, they lie, change the subject. | ||
| And Speaker Johnson and the House Republicans would rather duck out of town than come into session and do their jobs. | ||
| You know, when Leader Jeffries and I met with the president, he, of all people, seemed at least to somewhat appreciate the immense harm of letting these ACA credits expire. | ||
| Of course, we had to walk the president through it first because it seemed he had no clue of the crisis before our meeting. | ||
| But frankly, what should happen now is this: the president should lean on Speaker Johnson to relent on his extreme refusal to negotiate. | ||
| It's not a sustainable position for the Speaker to literally shut the entire House down and not do anything to solve this crisis. | ||
| Back to the phones now. | ||
| Mac in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Democrat, good morning, Mac. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| How are you doing this morning? | ||
| You know, Chuck Schumer needs to go away because he doesn't know what he's doing, but I'm speaking to the guy from Canada. | ||
| He's truly right, and the guy from Delaware. | ||
| But what I'm trying to get over this morning and let everyone know who voted for Trump, Trump said you were dumb. | ||
| The reason why he would run as a Republican, because Republicans were dumb, and you guys are showing it every day of the week. | ||
| Every day of the week. | ||
| You know, insurance should be for everyone. | ||
| The lady called and said she was 83 years old and had paid taxes the way she sounds. | ||
| She hadn't had a good job to pay that many taxes. | ||
| And she's getting paid every day of the week and going to the doctor. | ||
| She's getting ready to lose all of that. | ||
| She's dumb. | ||
| Aaron in Michigan, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning, Aaron. | ||
| Aaron, are you there in Michigan? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how are you there? | |
| Yes, we're here. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks so much for taking my call. | |
| Basically, that last caller took the words right out of my mouth. | ||
| As far as the Affordable Care Act, all it did was save my life. | ||
| It was left up to several different states to make their decision. | ||
| And it was quite odd that all these red states threw a monkey runch into that. | ||
| What we've got going on in this world right now is a big common sense problem. | ||
| And I think that a lot of the things that are happening in this country are coming out trifold, and especially from the lies Trump has told. | ||
| And right now, it's the Republican Party that controls all three levers of branches of government. | ||
| They have the votes to open the government, and they just choose not to do it. | ||
| Thanks for my call today. | ||
| Bye. | ||
| Ernestine in New York City, Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, dear. | |
| I would like to speak first about the undocumented immigrants. | ||
| Okay, they keep talking about Social Security. | ||
| Those people work, put into Social Security, can't draw a dime. | ||
| As of 2022, annually, which is yearly, they have put in each year $25.7 billion billion dollars that they cannot collect on. | ||
| And if you think I'm lying, Google it and you will see. | ||
| So when people are petty about them getting some sort of health care and they're not even getting it from the regular Medicare or Medicaid and they have a problem, this is absolutely ridiculous. | ||
| What the Democrats, I believe, really need to do, since Republicans don't believe anything, what they need to do is allow the government to go under the Republicans, give the Republican people what they want. | ||
| But when their hospitals are closing down, when they have to accept their loved ones back home because the nursing homes are closing, they can't feed their children because the SNAP program is gone, that they have to ride buses and trains because they repossessed their cars. | ||
| They no longer have a home because why? | ||
| They lost their mortgages. | ||
| When things like that happen, then they'll be able to see the Republican Party lied. | ||
| The Democrats spoke the truth. | ||
| The Republican Party lied. | ||
| Then go after those who lied to you. | ||
| Thank you very much and have a pleasant day. | ||
| And here's Howard in Indianapolis, Indiana. | ||
| Democrat, good morning, Howard. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yes, I advocate for a health care system, a single-payer health care system. | ||
| And we should really look at health care totally differently in this country as an essential resource that all Americans must have for a country that's based on the constitutional aspirations that we have for And Howard. | ||
| Sorry to cut you off. | ||
| Can you give a short kind of just give people an idea what a single payer system would look like and how much it would cost and how it would work? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, in my way of looking at it, we should look at health care as an essential resource for all Americans. | |
| So in my vision of how this would look is that we would mandate that health care is a right and the government owns making sure every citizen has a right. | ||
| So hospitals would be established in logical areas around the country. | ||
| There's a lot of tools to help us effectively plan that out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We operate on a sovereign fiat currency in this country. | |
| So the Congress can approve and issue currency sufficient to fund whatever we would need to establish a single payer system. | ||
| Then that removes money from the constraint issue that is often talked about. | ||
| We can then talk about real practical issues of do we have enough doctors, enough facilities, enough nurses. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We can have a more logical discussion about how to make this right because, pardon me, healthcare is not a product that a single individual can go to a marketplace and really buy. | |
| It's an essential resource that the government should make sure every citizen has. | ||
| And we already do this. | ||
| Think about national defense, for example. | ||
| You don't pay an extra tax for that. | ||
| We just recognize that that's a right for all Americans. | ||
| We should look at health care as the same, pardon me, the same way. | ||
| And that would then enable individuals to make decisions to go take a job anywhere in the country without worry about health care. | ||
| That would drive our economy. | ||
| I think it would be a multiplier, positive multiplier for all of our economy. | ||
| Got it, Howard. | ||
| In New York, Independent Line, is it Kitu? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| You know, this government shutdown just woke me up because just this year, my family, we've been killed, evicted, and robbed by gunpoint from the government. | ||
| And it's wrong because I'm living on the street. | ||
| They have indigenous rights in this country, and they did all of this just for one landlord so he could make up, raise the rent, bring in new people to get rental subsidies from the government. | ||
| So when it comes to the government shutdown, the whole budget needs to be addressed because I don't deserve to be on the street. | ||
| I've been working on here all my life for 40 years, and all of a sudden, I realize this is what the government has done. | ||
| So I would appreciate it someone could, you know. | ||
| And Ann is in New York, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Go ahead, Ann. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, and thanks for all you do over there at C-SPAN. | |
| A gentleman earlier mentioned the Hippocratic oath that doctors must take to provide care to people, and that is true, and that is very ethical. | ||
| There's also Antala, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, that is a law that anybody who comes to a hospital in an emergency situation, regardless of their immigration status, color, et cetera, must be treated. | ||
| The person who signed that in, hardly a flaming liberal Ronald Reagan, in, I believe, 1986. | ||
| So the same people who are against extending the Affordable Care Act credits many times claim to be Christians, and that's not very Christian to leave somebody bleeding out in an emergency room. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I am glad the Democrats are using the only leverage that they have for the American people. | |
| Thank you so much. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And later on on the Washington Journal, a conversation with Breitbart News editor-in-chief Alex Marlowe about his new book called Breaking the Law about the various legal cases against President Trump. | ||
| But first, after the break, Randy Irwin, National President of the National Federation of Federal Employees. | ||
| He joins us to talk about how the ongoing government shutdown is impacting federal workers. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Premiering this Friday at 7 p.m. on C-SPAN, Vice President Mike Pence and Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, once colleagues in Congress, sit down together for this episode of Ceasefire, hosted by Politico's White House Bureau Chief. | |
| Dasha Burns, Ceasefire, Bridging the Divide in American Politics, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins. | ||
| Two leaders, one goal, to find common ground only on C-SPAN. | ||
| All in 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. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| Joined now by Randy Irwin. | ||
| He is National President of the National Federation of Federal Employees. | ||
| Randy, welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Great to be here. | |
| Thank you for having me. | ||
| All right, so tell us first about the National Federation of Federal Employees. | ||
| What's the mission? | ||
| How many members do you have? | ||
| How does it work? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So we're America's first federal employee union since 1917. | |
| We represent 110,000 federal workers nationwide, and we're there to collective bargain on their half and to advocate for them for better policies, wages, benefits, things like that. | ||
| And we got folks in Department of Defense, Forest Service, VA, Passport, HUD, Housing and Irving Development, and about 35 agencies across the country. | ||
| And where in the country do your members live? | ||
| Is it mostly in D.C.? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's mostly not in Washington, D.C. People don't realize how spread out the federal government is. | |
| The workforce, only a little less than 15% are in Washington. | ||
| 85 are spread throughout the country. | ||
| That's where our membership is. | ||
| And what are your union dues? | ||
| Like, how much do people pay to become part of the union? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, they pay about a little over $35 a pay period, 26 times a year. | |
| So let's talk about the government shutdown. | ||
| Your union has been advocating and lobbying against this government shutdown for obvious reasons. | ||
| Tell us what your activities have been leading up to the shutdown and during the shutdown. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Well, it's been a little bit difficult. | ||
| I mean, we have an ongoing presence on Capitol Hill. | ||
| So we have professional lobbyists going up there and trying to avert a government shutdown. | ||
| We've got all our members calling into Capitol Hill, asking leaders in Congress to avoid a shutdown as well. | ||
| It's been a little bit hard because there's not a lot of cooperation happening. | ||
| When you look back to previous shutdowns, there was more collaboration. | ||
| There were actual ongoing conversations. | ||
| This time, it seems like we're not making progress very swiftly here. | ||
| And so I'm worried about how long this shutdown will last. | ||
| And your website, which is NFFE.org, it has a government shutdown center on its homepage. | ||
| What's the information that you're giving out there and the guidance that you're giving to your members? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Well, they have a lot of concerns about how things are going to work when a shutdown first starts. | ||
| They don't know what they're supposed to be doing. | ||
| So we give them advice as in going to work and find out if you're furloughed or not, those sorts of things. | ||
| And federal employees are about to start losing a significant amount of pay. | ||
| For most federal employees, this Friday, they're going to see a reduced paycheck, and that's the last pay that they will see until the government shutdown ends. | ||
| And so, and then they want to know how they can get involved, what they can do. | ||
| And it's a real bit of a weird time right now because this administration has shown a willingness to be putative to federal employees that are speaking publicly, even though it's their First Amendment right to do that. | ||
| And so that's a complicating matter. | ||
| The paychecks regarding the paychecks. | ||
| So GSA, the government, the General Services Administration, has a website that shows When the checks are supposed to be cut for payroll, and you can see here, it looks like the 10th, which is this Friday, would be the first one they would miss. | ||
| You said it would be reduced. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, the government started, the government shutdown started in the middle of a pay period. | |
| Oh, I see. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, this is their first payday, and it'll be reduced. | |
| They won't get paid for the time after October 1st or beyond. | ||
| Now, there are the so-called essential workers, right? | ||
| So, there are people still working, just not getting paid. | ||
| Who decides who is an essential worker and who is not? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's decided by the administration, and it has varied quite a bit from shutdown to shutdown. | |
| So, within the agency itself, does the agency leader or department head decide that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know the answer to that. | |
| I don't know the answer to that. | ||
| Randy Irwin is our guest. | ||
| You can give us a call if you'd like to join the conversation. | ||
| We've got a line set aside for federal workers. | ||
| That's 202-748-8003. | ||
| Also, if you're not a federal worker, you can feel free to call on our lines by party. | ||
| So, Republicans are on 202-748-8001, Democrats 202-748-8000, and Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| The furloughed workers will get back pay once the government opens. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| How fast after the government reopens will they be able to actually get the checks or get the money in their bank accounts? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's usually happened pretty quickly, definitely within a couple of weeks. | |
| Well, a couple of weeks might not be quickly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, yeah, that's a good point. | |
| That's a good point. | ||
| So, it's not like the next day that the money is paid back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It takes a few days. | |
| It takes a few days, but it's important to remember that this shutdown doesn't just impact federal employees. | ||
| There's a lot of folks, particularly people who work on federal contracts, that are in the exact same boat. | ||
| When a shutdown happens, they get furloughed. | ||
| And where there's legislation that we got done in 2019 that guarantees federal employees back pay after a shutdown for contract for millions of contractors out there, they will never see a nickel of the pay that they lost during a shutdown. | ||
| And so, that has a tremendous economic impact, you know, a cascading effect when a shutdown happens. | ||
| Federal employees, contractors, communities of all kinds. | ||
| Now, President Trump has warned that he will institute massive layoffs during this shutdown, reduction in force. | ||
| Last month, OMB Director Russ Vogt had instructed agencies to start preparing plans for a reduction in force. | ||
| Is that legal? | ||
| I know that it has not happened before during a shutdown, but if it does happen, would it be legally binding? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It is 100% illegal for the president to do what he's saying he's going to do. | |
| Why? | ||
| Because there's a legislation called the Anti-Deficiency Act, and that says that the administration can't spend money that Congress has not appropriated. | ||
| And it is impossible to go through a reduction in force to lay off federal employees without incurring money. | ||
| The government has to spend money to do that, and so they are not allowed to do it. | ||
| So, I mean, but they're threatening it anyway, and that means they're only doing one of two things, this administration. | ||
| Either they're indicating that they're going to do something illegal, which when the president does that, it's unconstitutional because he has a duty to faithfully execute the laws of this country. | ||
| So, he's either indicating that he's going to do something illegal and unconstitutional, or they're just grading federal employees. | ||
| Just really, you know, kind of being punitive, which they've shown a pattern of already, maybe to gain some bargaining power in this shutdown kind of negotiation that has to happen at some point. | ||
| Either way, it's despicable and it's certainly illegal for them to do what they're talking about doing. | ||
| No, OMB Director Vogt has said that he wants to terrorize. | ||
| He used the term terrorize federal employees. | ||
| He wants to make sure that they don't want to come to work. | ||
| Is that working? | ||
| What have you heard from your members? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Are they terrorized? | |
| Well, they realize that they've been treated like dirt. | ||
| I think those that maybe were most inclined to kind of be intimidated by that. | ||
| A lot of people took the early, you know, early resignation that just happened at the end of this fiscal year, September 30th. | ||
| Those folks are off the board. | ||
| Now we've got over 300,000 folks, federal workers, that are out of the federal government because of this administration. | ||
| But, you know, they're mainly disrespected. | ||
| These are folks that swear an oath to uphold the Constitution. | ||
| They take a big cut in pay in order to work for the federal government. | ||
| Federal employees make 25% less than people doing the exact same jobs in the private sector. | ||
| Don't forget, approximately one-third of federal employees are veterans. | ||
| So for this administration and the OMB director to be saying, I want these people to not come to work. | ||
| I want to terrorize these people, that's despicable. | ||
| It's terrible for the American people because the American people need these critical services. | ||
| And when you push the best and brightest out of government, you get a worse government for the American people. | ||
| And so I don't care who you are, what side of the aisle you're on, you should be disgusted that this administration is being putative like that to federal employees. | ||
| Let's talk to callers on the line for Democrats in Bakersfield, California. | ||
| Howard, you're on with Randy Irwin. | ||
| Howard, are you there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I am. | |
| Yes, go right ahead. | ||
| Yeah, I want to wonder why we're allowing this guy to keep breaking the law. | ||
| Everybody keep going and missing the whole point that everything he's doing is illegal. | ||
| Why don't we start there and enforce the Constitution? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Any comment? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think he makes a great point. | |
| I think I personally am very disappointed in Congress in not playing a bigger role, a constitutional role that they have to play to be a check on this president. | ||
| They pass the laws. | ||
| They control the purse strings. | ||
| That's Congress. | ||
| The administration implements the laws. | ||
| But they have a duty to actually follow them. | ||
| And so, you know, but this particular Congress, this Republican-led Congress, has shown a willingness to kind of be a lapdog of this president. | ||
| They're not holding him accountable at all, and they're just letting him violate the law six ways to Sunday. | ||
| And it's just really strange that they would, you know, abdicate their constitutional responsibility to this extent. | ||
| We need to see the Congress start having a backbone and holding this administration accountable. | ||
| Teresa is on the Republican line in Dandridge, Tennessee. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Obama shut the government down to pass Obamacare. | ||
| Now the Democrats have shut the government down to fund Joe Biden's extended COVID. | ||
| They used COVID as an excuse to extend the subsidies to Obamacare. | ||
| It went from 12 million people to 24 million people. | ||
| And they're using the shutdown to force Donald Trump and Republicans who never voted for Obamacare to pay for it by extortion, by any means possible, with a gun to our head. | ||
| They are forcing the American people who never wanted Obamacare and Donald Trump to pay for it. | ||
| And it most certainly does have funded abortions and health care to illegals. | ||
| So, Teresa, do you have a question about, yeah, I was just going to say, do you have a question about federal workers during the shutdown? | ||
| Anything related to our guest, Randy Irwin? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure, the federal workers, do they support funding abortion? | |
| All right, let's take that. | ||
| We just want to end the shutdown. | ||
| I mean, we represent federal workers. | ||
| Federal employees are being treated as pawns in a political fight that they have absolutely nothing to do. | ||
| There's some misnomer that a lot or most or all federal employees are Democrats. | ||
| That's not true. | ||
| The federal workforce is 2 million people spread throughout the country. | ||
| They look politically like the American citizens at large. | ||
| And so it's, you know, there's animosity towards federal employees that people don't understand because they think they're all in Washington, but they're not. | ||
| They're their friends and neighbors in every corner of this country. | ||
| Here's Patty in Portland, Oregon. | ||
| Democrat, good morning, Patty. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I just want to let you know that our city is not burning down. | ||
| I've lived here for 65 years of my life. | ||
| Same city, Portland. | ||
| And, you know, we have our homeless situation just like every other city in the world. | ||
| I know this isn't about the federal workers and everything. | ||
| But my thoughts go back to the Supreme Court making the decision to let the president be a criminal. | ||
| Okay, this is where our failure is in this country is we let a criminal who's got 38 felonies, has had so many bankruptcies that he can't even have another bankruptcy. | ||
| All right. | ||
| All right, Patty. | ||
| And she does mention the National Guard. | ||
| They are not being paid, but they are required to show up for work. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, my understanding is everybody funded, everybody paid from the federal government is impacted by this. | |
| So it's civilian federal employees. | ||
| It's the military, everybody funded by the federal government. | ||
| Some have to work, some are being furloughed, but nobody's going to be getting paid. | ||
| And, you know, it's important to remember the last shutdown, 2019, went on for 35 days, had a minimum impact of $11 billion, taken out of the economy. | ||
| It's terrible for the economy because of all the uncertainty that a shutdown creates. | ||
| It's also my understanding that lawmakers, so congressmen and representatives and senators, are continuing to be paid, but their staff is not. | ||
| So they don't get their paychecks, but the member actually does continue to be paid. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's interesting because when a shutdown goes long enough, there's an exponential curve in how much pain it creates. | |
| If it's only a day, it's not that bad. | ||
| If it gets into a week, people start missing pay. | ||
| It gets worse. | ||
| You start getting into missing two, you know, two, three paychecks, and all of a sudden there is a lot of pressure everywhere to end that shutdown. | ||
| I hope it doesn't come to that. | ||
| Now, if a federal worker can't pay their rent or can't pay bills, what kind of help is there for them? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Well, unions have some internal programs in order to kind of short-term financial help. | ||
| There's an organization called FIAFEEA.org. | ||
| It's a nonprofit federal employees helping federal employees that helps with that sort of thing as well. | ||
| The problem is much bigger than the solutions can be administered. | ||
| And so, you know, for people who are having the carpet pulled out from under them financially, it's just that. | ||
| And so there's not enough answers for the problems that there are. | ||
| A lot of people are going to miss payments, have food, insecurity, not be able to feed their families. | ||
| We've got a lot of GS3s in the GS pay scale that goes from 1 to 15. | ||
| Threes are on the lower end of that. | ||
| They start at $32,000 a year. | ||
| That's not a lot of money. | ||
| They're very close to the poverty level as it is. | ||
| A lot of them, I've heard that we represent, they live in their cars. | ||
| So, you know, and they, when they start losing paychecks, it becomes a real crisis very fast. | ||
| And then, of course, that spills in to the services. | ||
| A classic example is: you know, if people start missing a few paychecks, do we want air traffic controllers driving Ubers at night? | ||
| Because if you start missing paychecks and they're going to be defaulting on mortgages and payments and things like that, that's what you're going to have. | ||
| It shouldn't be like that in this country. | ||
| Congress needs to get along and pass a spending bill. | ||
| And speaking of air traffic controllers, there was during the last shutdown, which was 35 days, they started calling in sick and just not showing up. | ||
| And that had a tremendous impact on flight delays and things like that. | ||
| Here's Mark, Independent in Florida. | ||
| Good morning, Mark. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning. | |
| I'd like to ask Randy: is he getting paid during the shutdown? | ||
| I do get paid during the shutdown. | ||
| Is that all you wanted to say, Mark? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, no, no. | |
| And then he just mentioned the GS3s. | ||
| They're at poverty level. | ||
| If they're so concerned as a union leader, do they offer them a reduced rate for the union dues? | ||
| They suspend the union dues. | ||
| I mean, will they pay the same union dues as somebody making $150,000? | ||
| All right. | ||
| Most dues come directly off people's paychecks. | ||
| So we kind of aren't in, we don't have the mechanism to shut off or resume dues. | ||
| Most dues are coming directly off of people's paychecks. | ||
| And is it kind of a progressive fee that people pay? | ||
| If you're paid less, you would pay a less percentage, or is it the same percentage? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So in our union, we tend to have a flat rate mainly because if you kind of try to scale it, it becomes very difficult administratively, and you have to spend a lot of money doing financial stuff instead of the bread and butter, what we want to do, collective bargaining and advocacy and those sorts of things. | |
| But we do have a mechanism for lower paid workers to request and often be granted a lower rate, but it's done on a case-by-case basis. | ||
| On the Republican line in Syracuse, New York, Chuck, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| So I don't know why Randy's union exists except for two reasons. | ||
| One, because you have locally here in New York State, you have rubber rooms and federal level. | ||
| They're called temporary reassignment centers where union members who are accused of misconduct have to show up to work and then simply log on and they can write books, run real estate companies, et cetera, et cetera. | ||
| And two, because it gives gentlemen like Randy a paycheck and he can wear a nice suit and a nice tie. | ||
| What I do want to know is specifically for federal employees, what is he doing to help out ICE agents who are being shot at, spit at, having cars go after them, people threaten them. | ||
| Federal employees don't need unions. | ||
| All right. | ||
| What do you think of that, Randy? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I would respectfully disagree with most of what he said, except the tie. | |
| I thought that, you know, I appreciate that compliment. | ||
| But, you know, hey, everybody has a right in this country to, it's our First Amendment right to have advocacy and appeal to Congress. | ||
| And so, you know, my job is to be an advocate of federal employees. | ||
| And, you know, federal employees are given a lot of flack in this country. | ||
| They're shortchanged, you know, very frequently. | ||
| A lot of lies about who they are. | ||
| You know, they've created this image of lazy government bureaucrats, things that are not true. | ||
| These are hardworking people throughout the country keeping our military ready, caring for our veterans, maintaining our homeland security, caring for all of our public lands, clean air, clean water, safe air travel, safe food, secure passports, secure borders. | ||
| Civilian federal employees provide that. | ||
| The fact that they're treated like dirt by this Congress, by this administration, somebody's got to be a voice for them. | ||
| I'm very proud to be that voice. | ||
| Kimberly, North Las Vegas, Nevada, Democrat. | ||
| Kimberly, you're on the air. | ||
| Kimberly, are you with us? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I'm here. | |
| Hi, Kimberly. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Go right ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi and Randy. | |
| Hey, I want to applaud you, Randy, for coming on the air and taking up for your members. | ||
| I appreciate that. | ||
| Someone has to do it. | ||
| Federal government, I mean, federal workers right now are being treated not with, you know, they are being treated like dirt. | ||
| I do understand what you're saying, but I have to, I'm not a federal worker. | ||
| I have been in the union before. | ||
| I am in Las Vegas, so there's a lot of unions here. | ||
| But I started my career in a union, so I totally understand that. | ||
| But what you have to understand now is what we're looking at is the bigger picture. | ||
| There's 24 million people who need health care, and health care is going to skyrocket. | ||
| The Democrats have to hold the line. | ||
| If they cave on this issue, and I know a lot of federal workers that I know here in Nevada, they are supporting the Democrats to hold the line. | ||
| All of the people, all of the people who are under Obamacare, there's a lot of people here under the ACA in the state of Nevada. | ||
| Their health care will skyrocket. | ||
| We are a blue-collar state. | ||
| People cannot afford their health care to go up that dramatically. | ||
| So it's going to be either federal workers have to kind of, you know, I understand they're used as ponds right now. | ||
| I totally get that. | ||
| But you're looking, it's the biggest picture. | ||
| If the Democrats cave now, it's over. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Over. | ||
| Let's get a response. | ||
| Randy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You know, we represent federal employees. | ||
| We want to see an end to the shutdown. | ||
| Like she said, they are caught in the crossfire. | ||
| At the same time, we are continuing to express the need for a bipartisan solution here. | ||
| And, you know, we've got a shutdown. | ||
| Speaker Johnson has tried to assert: hey, we did our job and has taken his ball and gone home, isn't even here to start to resolve the issues and get to an end of the shutdown. | ||
| And that's what we need to see. | ||
| And so, you know, I think it's important to kind of give them enough space, give our leaders enough space to get to the end. | ||
| But right now, that's not even happening. | ||
| And we're certainly not standing in the way of that. | ||
| We want to see bipartisan compromise. | ||
| We want to see the decision makers get into a room, have some meaningful negotiations, and do the work of the American people and get to the end, you know, and get a deal, get a spending bill passed for the American people, reopen government. | ||
| Let's talk to Paul in Indianapolis, Indiana on the independent line. | ||
| Good morning, Paul. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I was an auditor with the federal government in Indianapolis for 25 years. | ||
| I did a lot of travel to D.C. | ||
| I think Mr. Irwin is being a little disingenuous when he's talking about the political composition of federal employees. | ||
| Like any other workforce, they tend to reflect where they live. | ||
| So in D.C., 95% of the people vote Democratic, and 95% of the federal employees are Democrats. | ||
| Since most of the big federal installations are in major cities, they tend to be Democrat. | ||
| So to put that aside, I've also noticed that in D.C., the civil servants often oppose Republican policy. | ||
| And so that makes it, it really is tough for a Republican government to get his policies that disagree with Democratic policies implemented. | ||
| I saw it in Reagan. | ||
| I saw it in both Bushes. | ||
| And I've seen it in Trump. | ||
| Also, just as a matter of fact, I think that there's an upper limit. | ||
| Like a GS3 can be a union member, but as a GS14, I was not allowed to be a union member, although I could pay dues in order to get some benefits. | ||
| I don't know how far I think it was like as GS9 and above, you can't really be a union, a voting union member represented. | ||
| Let's ask Randy about that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So some, not all federal employees can be union members. | |
| You got about 2 million federal employees nationwide. | ||
| About 1.2 million do have a union. | ||
| And then there's a subset of what's remaining that can be organized. | ||
| And I think we're trying to do that. | ||
| By the way, lots and lots of federal employees in a way that we've never seen in my 24 years with this union. | ||
| I've never seen federal employees that don't have a union try to organize a union as fast as they are right now. | ||
| They are coming out of the woodwork left and right, trying to organize a union because they want protections from this administration and the punitive things happening. | ||
| Anything else you want me to address on that, I'd be happy to. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| No, he said that civil service workers tend to oppose Republican policies. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think he's wrong. | |
| Well, you know, he's look, when you're talking about 2 million people, they're not a collective entity. | ||
| There's a great deal of variation. | ||
| One thing he said is that federal employees are all in big cities or something along those lines. | ||
| He's wrong about that. | ||
| He's wrong. | ||
| He's wrong. | ||
| Now, there are hubs of federal employees in big cities, Washington, D.C. | ||
| But again, he talked about 95% in Washington. | ||
| Only less than 15% of the federal workforce is in Washington. | ||
| All the others are spread out. | ||
| And the other thing is where you do have federal employees concentrated in, say, a government building downtown or something like that in a lot of cities. | ||
| There's also a huge military presence that was either, you know, by its nature in remote areas like national forests, parks, things like that, or our defense infrastructure, which was put out in rural areas strategically during the Cold War. | ||
| So, you know, he's not correct that all federal employees are in city centers like that. | ||
| In Bradenton, Florida, on the line for Republicans, Bill, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I too have to congratulate your guest for standing up for his employees, but I have a real problem when he kind of stretches a little bit by saying that the president is involved in illegal activity, breaking the law when it comes into layoffs. | ||
| He made the statement that he's going to be spending more money than Congress appropriated, which would be illegal. | ||
| However, I've never been involved in a layoff that eventually cost more than what you're saving by no longer employing employees. | ||
| I think you're going to understand how he's made that statement. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Let me let Randy clarify what you meant by the costs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's not about will it save more or less. | |
| It's that Congress has not appropriated any money, appropriated any money, and the administration is saying that they're going to take action and spend money that they haven't been appropriated yet. | ||
| So it's not that it'll save money more or less. | ||
| It's that they can't spend a nickel to do it. | ||
| And this administration is saying they are going to blatantly violate that law. | ||
| And so I'm not trying to go after this administration unduly. | ||
| They're saying they're going to break the Anti-Deficiency Act. | ||
| So Bill, are you still with us? | ||
| Does that make sense to you? | ||
| That it's the cost of laying off. | ||
| The process of laying off people. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I guess my understanding is that the Congress appropriates money based on the cost of a particular department, you know, including labor costs and whatever. | |
| So if the labor cost at the end of the year is less than what the Congress appropriated, I don't understand how you can nitpick as to how that savings was generated. | ||
| I think that's still kind of disingenuous, to be honest with you. | ||
| Right now, we're in a shutdown. | ||
| There is no money appropriated. | ||
| And so the only thing going on are 100% essential services. | ||
| By the way, pretty much all federal employees are essential. | ||
| Okay, so this whole notion of essential versus non-essential really only applies in a government shutdown where they don't even use those terms anymore, but this administration's bringing them back to make it seem like some federal employees are kind of not essential when all of them are essential to the work that is being done in this government. | ||
| All right, that's Randy Irwin, National President of the National Federation of Federal Employees. | ||
| They're on the web at nffe.org. | ||
| Thanks so much for joining us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for having me. | |
| All right, up next, a conversation with Breitbart News editor-in-chief, Alex Marlow, about his new book called Breaking the Law, Exposing the Weaponization of America's Legal System Against Donald Trump. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
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| We're joined now by Alex Marlowe, editor-in-chief of Breitbart News. | ||
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| It's great to be on C-SPAN, one of the few news outlets I actually like. | ||
| And in your book, you used the term lawfair superstructure. | ||
| Can you explain that? | ||
| Yeah, so the way I describe the lawfare apparatus in this country is not just isolated to a few people who I think are political, who I think are trying to practice lawfare, trying to practice politics via the legal system. | ||
| I really chart the entire apparatus from the funders of it to the people who support it to the people in the law schools who are kind of coaching up younger attorneys to be political actors. | ||
| And so I kind of explain the entire web because one thing that I do, I'm a conservative media person and I work from that perspective, but I also have a lot of respect for what the left has built in terms of their ability to get things done politically. | ||
| And one of those, part of that is that I actually try to figure out how they've had the successes that they've had. | ||
| And it doesn't happen overnight. | ||
| It's not just in one fell swoop. | ||
| People are working day after day, year after year, to try to build an apparatus so that they can deliver political victories. | ||
| And one thing the left has done, and you can see this right now, is the number one resistance to President Trump right now is actually the legal system. | ||
| And that doesn't happen overnight. | ||
| That happens over a very long time. | ||
| And I try to map what that is. | ||
| Is that because the legal system is the only thing left to stand up against Donald Trump, given that the Republican House and the Republican Senate is not? | ||
| Yeah, it's a great way of putting it. | ||
| They're certainly stronger and I think a lot smarter than what we're seeing from the political, like the literal political left right now, because they do retain a lot of power. | ||
| That Joe Biden and before him, Barack Obama with Chuck Schumer were very efficient about getting judges appointed. | ||
| They also co-opted other parts of the legal apparatus, such as the law schools, which are basically breeding grounds for left-wing political power. | ||
| And that's what it does there. | ||
| And I think a lot of people on the right have overlooked that to some extent as being a legitimate threat. | ||
| And given the fact that the Republicans have their triple majority, and I think that they're sort of leaderless on a political level, as we've been seeing during the shutdown, they don't really have a cohesive narrative. | ||
| The thing that has been the most efficient for the pushback against President Trump has for sure been the law through apparatus. | ||
| The prosecution of the indictment of former FBI director James Comey, what was your reaction to that? | ||
| Are you in support of that? | ||
| Yeah, very supportive of it. | ||
| I think, first of all, Comey was one of the clearest, I think, bad actors who was trying to use the law in order to play politics. | ||
| And I think that there are several examples. | ||
| But that's not what he's being indicted for. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Well, but I'm not an attorney, and I'll let the legal system work out whether or not he's being indicted for something that was legitimate. | ||
| That's something that lawyers can sort that out. | ||
| But I do know that Comey's motivation has been to be a political actor. | ||
| And you see with some of the evidence I bring forward in the book is, for example, that he had leaked information, government information, classified information, to a Columbia professor with the intention of leaking to the New York Times in order to set up a special counsel on Russia collusion, which was completely fake and was egged on by the lawfare apparatus. | ||
| You're saying he has actually leaked classified information. | ||
| I think that's what's going to bear out as this thing takes place. | ||
| As we look into him deeper and deeper, I think that's what's going to be the evidence. | ||
| Because I think his clearly, when you see his motivations, the way he describes things online, posting things as 86, 47, which is obviously a call to take out President Trump, he's someone who's motivated deeply by stopping Donald Trump by any means necessary. | ||
| And I think that means that he has done whatever he can to try to do that. | ||
| And that includes leaking. | ||
| Obviously, you've seen the True Social post of President Trump urging the Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute former FBI Director Comey and other political perceived foes of the president. | ||
| Is that, in your estimation, lawfare on the part of the president? | ||
| So one thing about lawfare is that it is practiced by both sides. | ||
| I think the leftist practices it much more robustly and much more effectively. | ||
| And the centerpiece of the book, as I go through the six major cases against President Trump, and every one of them have things in common. | ||
| And the two main things that I think are really important, they all rely on novel legal theories. | ||
| They all rely on things that have never been tested before in order to try to get Trump. | ||
| And they all had coordination from the Joe Biden White House, which is, I believe, the scandal of the century. | ||
| And it's being completely underplayed. | ||
| No one's identified that commonality that Joe Biden's White House was involved, which is involved in what? | ||
| All of the six major cases against President Trump. | ||
| There's a connection to Joe Biden's White House that has not been explored. | ||
| Either key players coming from the White House or coordinating with the White House at the time. | ||
| And you have that evidence and you've published that in the British Republic. | ||
| It's all in the book. | ||
| It's all in breaking the law. | ||
| And all of this, right, I'm happy to give several examples during the course of the conversation. | ||
| But this is all violation of due process laws. | ||
| It's all violating equal protection under the law. | ||
| And so considering that that was taking place from the Joe Biden White House against Trump, I believe specifically to rig an election, specifically designed to try to subvert our democracy. | ||
| Remember, the left's always talking about democracy constantly, that democracy is under attack. | ||
| Well, they had used the legal system to try to stop Trump before the Americans had a chance to vote at the polls. | ||
| And so when you go through that level of effort to use the law to try to undermine our electoral system, I think it is fair game to look into the main practitioners of it. | ||
| And Comey's absolutely one of them. | ||
| If you'd like to join our conversation, if you've got a question for Alex Marlow of Breitbart, you can give us a call. | ||
| The lines are bipartisan. | ||
| Republicans are on 202-748-8001. | ||
| It's 202-748-8000 for Democrats and 202-748-8002 for Republicans. | ||
| I want to ask you about the difference between the Comey indictment and the Biden DOJ's indictments of President Trump. | ||
| This is Ellie Mistal was on the program earlier on this program, and he was asked about that. | ||
| And then I'll get your response. | ||
| I understand that there are people in this world who think, well, if you do X, then I do Y. That's fair. | ||
| It's the same thing. | ||
| But no, that's not how the law works. | ||
| Like, the feelings are not the thing that motivates the law. | ||
| If you have evidence of crime, you are supposed to prosecute the wrongdoers, right? | ||
| Like, that is what the Justice Department is there for. | ||
| It's not there to play tit for tat. | ||
| If you don't have evidence of crime, I don't care how much you don't like the guy, you're not supposed to prosecute him, right? | ||
| And again, I say this as a person who is no fan of James Comey. | ||
| And frankly, Mimi doesn't like having to go on television to defend him. | ||
| Like, I like the guy. | ||
| I think he did bad things, right? | ||
| But they don't have evidence of crime. | ||
| And so he shouldn't be prosecuted. | ||
| With Trump, they had evidence of crime. | ||
| And so he should have been prosecuted. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Two things are different. | |
| What do you think? | ||
| Well, I'm not sure what evidence of crimes he's talking about with President Trump, but I guess we could talk about the DOJ. | ||
| I think he was specifically in this clip. | ||
| He was talking about the classified documents cases. | ||
| Sure, yeah. | ||
| The classified documents one, there absolutely was a small amount of evidence that Trump had done something that he shouldn't have done. | ||
| And I break all that down. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Meaning illegal. | |
| Yeah, perhaps, again, I'm not an attorney, so lawyers can comment on whether or not things are illegal or not. | ||
| But the fact of the matter is that he was way overprosecuted for having those classified documents, all of which he could have had, all of which he could have had declassified at any point. | ||
| And yeah, but that's the most substantial piece of evidence against Trump that he does something illegal. | ||
| That's in the book of the six cases I go through. | ||
| But again, there are so many other people, every single president, many vice presidents, many generals, I document them all, who had done all those things and worse and had gotten wrist slaps or nothing. | ||
| And Trump, they had the FBI come in and raid Melania's underwear drawer and look in Behron's Peloton room, which was completely absurd. | ||
| And that led to the Jack Smith Special Prosecutor, which Jack Smith's special counsel was not constitutional. | ||
| And this is the whole thing that kind of is mind-blowing that we all blow through this. | ||
| He operated with impunity for 18, 19 months. | ||
| His job did not exist. | ||
| It was not legal. | ||
| And that's how Trump ended up winning those cases is his team finally figured out that, wait a minute, this is illegal. | ||
| And he proved it in a court. | ||
| And that's why all that got thrown out, which to me is such a much bigger deal than someone having a couple of documents they could have declassified and then didn't. | ||
| This is a completely bogus special counsel that operated leaking the Washington Post constantly, all designed to try to undermine our democracy from justice. | ||
| Let's talk to callers. | ||
| This is Rannell in Lawrenceville, Georgia. | ||
| Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| Just wondering in the six cases that he's referring to in his book, were there any Republican judges that ruled against Donald Trump? | ||
| And outside of that, were there ever any Republican judges that ruled against Donald Trump? | ||
| And if the answers are yes, is that considered Democratic warfare? | ||
| Welfare? | ||
| So one thing that I documented throughout the book is that Republican judges have a much higher incident of ruling against Republican candidates, presidents, et cetera. | ||
| And Democrats do from time to time as well. | ||
| But overall, if you look at the percentages that I look at, it's way actually more common for Republicans to go against Republicans than it is for Democrats to go against Democrats. | ||
| And I cite example after example of Democrats not only practicing lawfare from the bench, but then using their post, using their position to actually lecture people on politics, sometimes for hours at a time, trying to make sure that they're making a political statement, not just a legal one. | ||
| One thing I like that Ellie said there was talking about feelings. | ||
| Law is not supposed to have feelings. | ||
| Well, it does in a lot of cases. | ||
| And a lot of times it really is people who are Democrat appointees who are doing that. | ||
| Ronald in Troy, North Carolina, Republican, you're on with Alex Marlowe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Yes. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| My question is why did they want to let Adam Schiff sign off on that dossier and let Hillary Clinton pay for that dossier and get away with it? | ||
| Why did they weaponize it against Trump? | ||
| Why are they getting away with all this? | ||
| And the Democrat Party is so wicked and so evil. | ||
| They're getting away with everything. | ||
| That's my opinion. | ||
| And that's my question. | ||
| Yeah, I think that's a great way of summing up the whole conversation so far is that when the Democrats do something where they're trying to apply the law in order to achieve a political means, we all treat it like it's very normal. | ||
| And that's Democrats, Republicans alike. | ||
| They all treat, well, that's just the way things are. | ||
| And then when someone on the right tries to use legal means to try to make life slightly difficult for a political appointee, someone who went out of his way to leak information to the press, to professors, in order to try to get special counsels to subvert our democracy, as James Comey did, we act like that's outrageous. | ||
| And I find that to be deeply hypocritical. | ||
| And if you look at someone like a Schiff, who clearly is someone who's an attorney, someone who was one of the impeachment managers, the impeachment managers, that is their whole farm system of people who are trying to get ready to try to play politics using our legal system. | ||
| And none of them have been held accountable at all. | ||
| They just get promoted. | ||
| They get contributorships on television. | ||
| They get better committee appointments. | ||
| Adam Schiff got promoted to senator out in my home state of California. | ||
| So they get rewarded for that behavior. | ||
| And it's important to make that distinction. | ||
| Attorney General Pam Bondi will be appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee today and in about 15 minutes or so. | ||
| You can see on your screen there the room where she's expected to testify. | ||
| She will be asked about the Epstein files. | ||
| Have you been satisfied with her administration's handling of those files? | ||
| No, this is a big mess for Pam Bondi, who I don't know her at all. | ||
| And I think some of the stuff she's doing is good. | ||
| So it's not trying to be a whole, everyone makes it like you have to extrapolate her entire character over this. | ||
| But it was really mishandled the way that they had the Epstein file documents part one that were released to those conservative influencers. | ||
| And then they went out and they posted for photos with them. | ||
| I think that that was a big error because I haven't seen the Epstein files part two. | ||
| There wasn't a lot of new stuff in those files. | ||
| And I think a lot of people online in the president's base, a lot of the people who are my core audience at Breitbart, they thought there would be more information released. | ||
| And they thought that part of the reason Trump was elected was to make sure that some of that information came out. | ||
| Now, I don't know how much information is out there. | ||
| I'm not someone who's as obsessed with the Epstein story as a lot of people who read my website every day and who are part of the conservative online culture. | ||
| But I'll tell you that people thought there was more than has been released. | ||
| And that hasn't looked great for this administration. | ||
| I think they're aware of that, though. | ||
| I think they would like to release as much as they can that they can. | ||
| I don't know why they can't release everything, but I know that from a media messaging perspective, that was not effective. | ||
| And it also gave the left something to attack the president with. | ||
| Here's Angela in Conowingo, Maryland, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Well, first, you're wrong about the special prosecutor, Morrison v. Olson, 1988. | ||
| The Supreme Court upheld that the special prosecutors are legitimate, but that's not why I called. | ||
| No, no, special prosecutors can be legitimate. | ||
| It's that this one wasn't because Jack Smith essentially answered to no one. | ||
| So he didn't actually have a boss. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's not why I call it. | |
| That's not why I call it. | ||
| Okay, all right, go ahead. | ||
| That's not why I call it. | ||
| Okay, so I called to ask you one question because they were talking about lawfare, which is using the courts to damage your political opponents. | ||
| Now, I'll get to my question, but let me give you some examples before. | ||
| In my opinion, I think Trump used lawfare in the 2020 election to damage Joe Biden by claiming fraud when it didn't exist and trying to seal an election. | ||
| And here's some examples from the Jack Smith report. | ||
| First, before the election, he said he was going to claim fraud if he lost. | ||
| Second, there's evidence in there that he admitted he lost the election. | ||
| Third, in the court lawsuits, Giuliani, Giuliani would get on TV and say fraud, fraud, fraud. | ||
| And then he would go to court and tell the judges he didn't have any evidence of fraud. | ||
| And then Trump's acting attorney general, he asked his acting attorney general, and I quote, just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and Republican congressmen. | ||
| I think a lot of these people need to read the Jack Smith report instead of fairy tales on lawfare. | ||
| But my question is, if those examples are true and the evidence bears it out, do you think that in 2020, Trump used lawfare by the attorney generals and the courts to try to overturn a legitimate election that he knew was legitimate? | ||
| All right, Angela. | ||
| So there's actually some really important points in there. | ||
| The first one is that Trump has been remarkably consistent about believing that he actually did win the election. | ||
| Now, this is a big, this is something that we could really unpack for a long time. | ||
| I'm not in the book defending that position at all, but what I do map out pretty consistently is Trump is across the board. | ||
| He says, I won that election. | ||
| It was a legitimate election that I would have won. | ||
| And there was only one incident that I could find where he even indicated at all he may have lost. | ||
| He said on some podcast that he lost by a whisker, and that was one time. | ||
| And every other time, he has been very consistent that he believes he won. | ||
| And that's just his position. | ||
| I'm not here to defend that position. | ||
| I'm here to say that he has been consistent with that. | ||
| And I think that that's a very important point because a lot of people act as though he's been inconsistent, and he hasn't. | ||
| And I think that his administration, using lawfare, if he did, it was incredibly ineffective when he was doing that. | ||
| But I do acknowledge in the book that Trump contesting the election, even though he relied on precedent that I think was set up by John F. Kennedy in terms of trying to convene these alternative electors. | ||
| It wasn't his idea as Democrat John Kennedy's idea to do it. | ||
| That's not something that I'm really, that's not the point of the book. | ||
| And I do acknowledge it as an example of Republican conservative lawfare. | ||
| But I'm saying that both sides practice it. | ||
| The Democrats just practice it much more robustly, and they've had much more, they've been much more effective when doing it. | ||
| And they've also been able to harass conservatives and Republicans a lot with it. | ||
| I cite people who've been disbarred. | ||
| I cite a whole apparatus that allows for that to happen. | ||
| And I'm also not here. | ||
| I don't know anything that Rude Giuliani says. | ||
| I don't keep up with everything he says. | ||
| So I don't know. | ||
| I can't speak to that point. | ||
| Here's James in Independent in Newark, New Jersey. | ||
| Hi, James. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hi, Don. | |
| Thanks for having me back, C-Span. | ||
| Hi, Don, sir. | ||
| I'm doing good. | ||
| Let me tell you something about publicans. | ||
| I've been off along with the FBI since 1967. | ||
| Jiggled face. | ||
| Now, my father, he'd been off and on but change to the show. | ||
| In other words, if necessary, the headman for the change, we have ways of doing things which you know nothing about. | ||
| It's the shadow hall intelligence. | ||
| Have a nice day. | ||
| Incredible. | ||
| Stephen in Schenectady, New York, Republican. | ||
| Good morning, Stephen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, America. | |
| I would just like to, Alex Morrow, I follow Breitbart. | ||
| I read Breitbart. | ||
| I used to be able to comment on it, but they don't like comments that don't agree. | ||
| But I read your articles, and you write books. | ||
| You allege crimes. | ||
| Nobody's ever held accountable for a crime that you allege. | ||
| Can you tell us where do you get the information from? | ||
| And what gives you the right to put crimes on people who didn't commit a crime? | ||
| Do you have an example, Stephen? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Alex Morrow says everything in the Democratic Party is a crime. | |
| He's accused Barack Obama of crimes. | ||
| He's accused Joe Biden of crimes. | ||
| He's accused everybody of crimes. | ||
| Nobody's ever arrested. | ||
| Nobody's ever tried. | ||
| And then, and the bad part is, you're a total partisan. | ||
| And America is not going forward with partisans. | ||
| Partisanship is not going to advance America. | ||
| You sit in putting crimes on people, that's not going to advance America. | ||
| All right, Stephen. | ||
| And similar to that, Carl from Scranton, Pennsylvania says to you, if this man isn't a lawyer, how is he distinguishing what is frivolous prosecution and what isn't? | ||
| So I consulted with lots and lots of attorneys, people highly educated, and I interviewed lots of people who have some of the highest credentials you could possibly have. | ||
| And to Stephen's point as well, I have hundreds and hundreds of sources in my books. | ||
| Every book has meticulously sourced. | ||
| So every single thing that I cite, and I try to cite establishment media sources to comfort some people who might be skeptical, as much as humanly possible, it's one of the commitments I have. | ||
| And even though I admit that I am a partisan, I am a conservative person, and I would like to see conservatives win. | ||
| I do try to bring the receipts whenever possible. | ||
| And I don't specifically allege crimes. | ||
| I do identify things that clearly should be investigated because, for example, when people, when prosecutors are running for elections, as did Alvin Bragg, as did Letitia James, as did Fonnie Willis, specifically in that they're going to deprive rights of another human being, in this case, we're talking about Donald Trump, that that is clear violations of due process clauses, clear violations of equal justice under the law. | ||
| Those are all things that are the underpinning of our entire society. | ||
| That's our foundation of this country, that we treat people in a law and order system equally. | ||
| And Donald Trump was not treated that way. | ||
| And then that is where things should begin in terms of an investigation. | ||
| Alex, you said that you talked to hundreds of lawyers, highly credentialed legal experts. | ||
| What did they tell you about the Comey indictment? | ||
| So I didn't talk to them specifically about Comey. | ||
| He's only a small factor of the book. | ||
| I feel like it's important to discuss him because it's in terms of the context of the general news cycle, but he only appears a couple of times throughout the book. | ||
| But what I do know is that Comey was certainly one of the people behind the Russian collusion hoax, which I believe tried to undermine the president's first administration so he could not operate and operate as an effective president because he was distracted by what was a total farce. | ||
| Here's Anthony in Miller Place, New York, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Anthony. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, I have a question for the moderator as well, a guest. | |
| For the guest, I wondered on December 28, Barack Obama and the Oval Office had shuttered two embassies, one on the Potomac River and one in New York and Glencove. | ||
| Two Russian embassies, they ejected about approximately 40 senior Russian diplomats and their families within 24 hours. | ||
| Now, is that not connected to the Russian hoax narrative? | ||
| And does that not, are there not RICO laws that should pertain to this activity with regard to lawfare and the targeting of political opponents because they lost the election? | ||
| And I wonder why is this not brought up? | ||
| We're going after Comey. | ||
| But obviously, the ejection of those Russian diplomats within 24 hours of losing the election under a Russian hoax narrative. | ||
| And Durham, what did John Durham expose with regard to it? | ||
| I mean, he seemed to be more of a dog and pony show. | ||
| For the moderator of C-SPAN, my question is with regard to Ceasefire, the new program that you're having. | ||
| And when Sam Feist was asked if callers would be allowed, C-SPAN viewers would be allowed to question your guests, he seemed to never even consider that as being part of the programming. | ||
| And isn't that part of the problem when you exclude the taxpayers from the equation? | ||
| And you really just, thank you. | ||
| Thank you, C-SPAN. | ||
| We got that. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Yeah, with regard to John Durham. | ||
| I'm a talk show host, a podcaster, an Alex Marlowe show podcast. | ||
| People are interested. | ||
| And I was always a John Durham skeptic. | ||
| I didn't think that he was going to deliver anything shocking, and I think that turned out to age very well. | ||
| I didn't really see anything big that he revealed that was a big revelation. | ||
| I didn't quite follow the Obama example, so I apologize there. | ||
| I'm not sure exactly. | ||
| But if he was trying to prove some sort of Russian collusion hoax, I would say the entire lawfare superstructure that I talk about in the book at length was trying to figure out some evidence that Donald Trump had colluded with Russia to rig an election, including Robert Mueller and his team of just absolute, just highly educated, highly trained, highly effective attorneys, and they couldn't do it. | ||
| So that's open shot to me. | ||
| It's case closed. | ||
| Alex, there is a new Gallup poll that came out last week with this headline: trust in media at new low of 28% in U.S. Republicans' confidence in mass media to report news, quote, fully, accurately, and fairly, now at 8%. | ||
| We won't go into details because we don't have that much time, but what's your reaction to that? | ||
| This is a big victory for alternative media. | ||
| It's a big victory for me at Breitbart News and stuff that I've been working on for the last 17 years since I was the first employee. | ||
| It's a big victory for Andrew Breitbart, our founder. | ||
| It is alternative media is the present now. | ||
| And it feels like after day after day, literally every day of my career, documenting the instances where the media has gotten the biggest stories of the day wrong. | ||
| At Breitbart, we're famous for identifying the crisis of the southern border, the Brexit phenomenon in the UK, which people didn't believe could happen. | ||
| How large is your audience, Alex? | ||
| Millions of people. | ||
| I mean, it's a figure audience. | ||
| So, at what point do you become mass media? | ||
| You know, you use the term alternative media, but Breitbart's been around for a long time, and it's, as you just said, it's got a big audience. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, well, we have been. | ||
| It's definitely interesting because we're certainly in, maybe we're middle-aged now. | ||
| Like, we're certainly not dinosaur media, but we're not the freshest site. | ||
| And I think that's good. | ||
| I think we've matured a lot, and I think that we're highly effective so that people like you. | ||
| I think if you get a Breitbart article and you can bring it to air, you get a high confidence that, yes, we have a conservative perspective, but it's all incredibly accurate. | ||
| But after looking at the stories from the Russian collusion hoax to that inflation is going to, the Bidenflation was transitory, and Trump's tariffs are going to cause inflation, and the coronavirus didn't start in the lab, and all these things that Trump's whole base is racist, even though he's picking up voters from all different minority groups. | ||
| All of these lies that have been told by the media over the last decade and a half that I've been tracking. | ||
| I think that most Americans are understanding that they're getting a perspective when you see a Washington Post or an NBC News or a CBS. | ||
| You're not just getting straight news, you're getting their viewpoint. | ||
| I'll offer you my viewpoint ahead of time, and everyone knows this. | ||
| I'm upfront about this. | ||
| So, I think that's a big advance in society. | ||
| And then, something like Fox News, do you consider that in the same bucket as this mass media that shouldn't be trusted? | ||
| Yeah, they're probably similar to where we are, which is I think for the most part they announce where they're coming from. | ||
| And I think people understand that when they're consuming Fox, and I think that that's acceptable. | ||
| So, I think that that's if you announce your biases and then allow for people to evaluate you afterwards, that's all I'm asking for. | ||
| What happens that is the most frustrating to me as a observer is to see the New York Times, for example, package a story with a clear perspective and act as though it's just neutral and it's not. | ||
| Let's take one more call. | ||
| Eddie in Shrub Oak, New York, Independent Line. | ||
| Eddie, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was just wondering if you were doing any investigations on Operation Arctic Frost that Jack Smith launched against the Republican Party. | |
| Arctic Frost? | ||
| Yeah, it's ringing a bell, but I don't have it off the tip of my brain. | ||
| What's it about, Eddie? | ||
|
unidentified
|
They investigated 100 Republican groups, Charlie Kirk's groups, and then yesterday Senator Johnson came out and said that they had illegally investigated wiretapped. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Okay, go ahead, Alex. | ||
| Yeah, this is all our part of it. | ||
| Again, I don't have the details of the tip of my brain again, but I'll tell you that this is the pattern that people in the Joe Biden apparatus. | ||
| I go through all the major players in the DOJ, that many of them were motivated to try to dedicate their time and their resources to investigating people who were political threats. | ||
| And in the meantime, law and order suffered deeply in this country. | ||
| Our cities got less safe. | ||
| People got away with all sorts of crimes. | ||
| And a lot of the effort was not on keeping American citizens safe. | ||
| It was going after political opponents. | ||
| And I think the more we dig into it, the more that's what we're going to find. | ||
| All right, let's see if we can sneak in. | ||
| Edna in Louisiana, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Edna. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| What is his name? | ||
| Alex is talking about Trump and due process. | ||
| Why is he able to get due process and other people can get due process? | ||
| A lot of people are in jail without having due process. | ||
| And he sits. | ||
| Hello? | ||
| Yep, go ahead, Edna. | ||
| Other people like who don't get due process. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He sits there and singles out the three black people, Letitia Jan, Breg, and the other lady. | |
| He sits there and spotlight those three. | ||
| There's other people who's done crime. | ||
| That's never been proven about these three black people. | ||
| And you sit there and you're telling us all kind of lies. | ||
| Okay, well, just because they were the three who campaigned specifically on getting Donald Trump with their legal positions. | ||
| And I spent a lot of the book going after Jack Smith. | ||
| I wrote an entire book about Joe Biden. | ||
| He's incredibly white. | ||
| Joe Biden's almost translucent. | ||
| That's how white Joe Biden is. | ||
| So a lot of the focus of the book is on Merrick Garland's on Andrew Weissman. | ||
| It's on Lisa Monaco, Vanita Gupta. | ||
| These are names that are all documented in great detail in the book. | ||
| So it just, they weren't the ones who campaigned specifically on I'm going to get Trump with my power. | ||
| And I'm a due process advocate, and I want everyone to have due process. | ||
| Everyone should get due process in this country. | ||
| That's what I'm fighting for: equal justice under the law. | ||
| That's all I ask. | ||
| All right. | ||
| That's Alex Marlowe. | ||
| He is the editor-in-chief of Breitbart News. | ||
| You can find his work at Breitbart.com. | ||
| And his book is called Breaking the Law: Exposing the Weaponization of America's Legal System Against Donald Trump. | ||
| Thanks so much for joining us today. | ||
| This is great. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And that's it for us today on Washington Journal. | ||
| We're back tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| Thanks for watching, everybody. | ||
| We will take you right over to the Senate Judiciary Committee for the Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is testifying there. | ||
| that's set to get underway momentarily. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're live here on Capitol Hill where Attorney General Pam Bondi is testifying on oversight of the Justice Department. | |
| She's appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. | ||
| This is live coverage on C-SPAN. | ||
| And we'll go to the calls now. | ||
| Doug is in Fairfax, South Dakota, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Doug. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning, Mimi. | |
| I am hoping that the Democrats, they stick with this and don't open the government because you know they're not going to do nothing about the health care. | ||
| They wanted to get rid of health care forever. | ||
| And they keep going on about immigrants all getting this health care, which is probably true on the emergency room. | ||
| There was some other little deal. | ||
| This lady you had on there here a while back told us all, so we all should know this in Act Geology. | ||
| But the way Christy, the dog killer, is going around getting rid of all these immigrants, they're not going to have to worry about no immigrants here pretty soon because there's not going to be none around, for one thing. | ||
| And what they should do is when is it actually supposed to be passed? | ||
|
unidentified
|
In March? | |
| But anyway, they should charge these people like a $200 penalty. | ||
| I used to work Rogue Instruction. | ||
| And if you ever drove on Interstate 90, 80 or 70 through the states of Kansas, South Dakota, and Nebraska, you probably drove on work I did. | ||
| But if we would get a job done early, sometimes we'd get a bonus. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But if we didn't get a job done in time, we'd be penalized. | |
| So these politicians should be penalized, like 200 bucks a day or maybe divide what days you got left into their pay. | ||
| And every day they're not there, they should be deducted that pay, in my opinion. | ||
| And this Gaza deal, they're not going to get nothing going there because I think that 21 started out a 21-point plan by the TBN or that religious channel. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But now I think it's changed quite a bit. | |
| And Benjamin kind of rewrote it, I believe. | ||
| But I hope they do. | ||
| Got your point. | ||
| Julie is in Potomac, Maryland, Independent Line. | ||
| Hi, Julie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, how are you today? | |
| Good. | ||
| I support the government shutdown 100%. | ||
| Only thing you need to do is go to DOJ website. | ||
| 12 employees stole $550 million from USAID. | ||
| One employee stole $100 million from the U.S. Army. | ||
| I solely support the government shutdown. | ||
| The health care crisis, I hope the Republican Party stands their ground, keep the government shut down. | ||
| I do not agree with the Democrat Party. | ||
| Hold on, Julie. | ||
| You were saying the Department of Justice website has this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Only then you need to go to the DOJ website. | |
| The thievery is unbelievable. | ||
| The amounts of money that was stolen from the federal government from employees that actually work there. | ||
| Only thing you have to do is go to DOJ website, salute the Department of Justice, and you will see all the money that was stolen over a short period of time. | ||
| One lady, Janet Milio, stole $100 million from the U.S. Army in a six-year period. | ||
| Who signed off on all of that? | ||
| Where were the people that were in place? | ||
| And Julie, you're seeing this on the DOJ website, so justice.gov. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Public knowledge. | |
| Yes, it's public knowledge. | ||
| She just was sentenced to 10 years in prison. | ||
| And they said. | ||
| Okay, okay. | ||
| We'll look into that. | ||
| Let's go to Jim in Cairo, Missouri. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| The Republicans don't care about health care. | ||
| Neither does Trump. | ||
| Shut down, a bad deal. | ||
| I don't see any way out of it. | ||
| What comes to mind, though, is the phrase: deconstruct the administrative state, destroy the system. | ||
| What better way to destroy the system than to shut it down, pull the plug, defund it, unman it? | ||
| Trump is now a dictator. | ||
| Why would he reopen the government and be subject to oversight again? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And here's Chris, Washington, D.C., Independent Line. | ||
| Hi, Chris. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, yeah. | |
| You know, the Republicans have been shutting the government down since January 20th. | ||
| I mean, this right here is just a cherry on top for them. |