| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Contains bio and contact information for every House and Senate member of the 119th Congress. | |
| Contact information on congressional committees, the President's Cabinet, federal agencies, and state governors. | ||
| The Congressional Directory costs $32.95 plus shipping and handling, and every purchase helps support C-SPAN's non-profit operations. | ||
| Scan the code on the right or go to c-span shop.org to order your copy today. | ||
| Welcome to C Spire, where we seek to bridge the divide in American politics. | ||
| I'm Dasha Burns, Politico White House Bureau Chief. | ||
| And joining me now on either side of the desk, two guests who have agreed to keep the conversation civil, even when they disagree. | ||
| Former Republican Vice President Mike Pence and Ram Emmanuel, former Ambassador to Japan, former Obama chief of staff, and former Chicago Mayor. | ||
| Thank you both for joining me. | ||
| You are our guinea pigs, and you might be our role models if this all goes well. | ||
| Thank you for joining us for a very first show. | ||
| We'll see. | ||
| We'll see at the end of this. | ||
| We'll see. | ||
| Or maybe both, or maybe both. | ||
| Well, thank you both for joining me. | ||
| This is our experiment here to see if we can find some common ground, even from two guys that are very different characters. | ||
| Not only are you two from opposite parties, but we've got a tough talk in City Slicker here and perhaps the epitome of Midwestern nice. | ||
| But one thing that people might not know about you. | ||
| But people may be surprised that your relationship actually goes way back. | ||
| You guys served in Congress together for six years. | ||
| In the early 2000s, your offices were close to each other. | ||
| So what you became friendly neighbors, how did that work out? | ||
| Well, that happened because, you know, Indiana's famous for a lot of things. | ||
| Popcorn's one of them. | ||
| I love your popcorn. | ||
| So as a congressman, I had a popcorn machine in the lobby of my office, and my staff frequently saw Congressman Ram Emanuel come down for a bag. | ||
| And he was always welcome. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I want to be clear, it was a bag of popcorn. | |
| Let's be very clear. | ||
| This is not Chicago. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| So you would go, you'd get some popcorn, you want to talk politics? | ||
| Maybe you get a lottery, you know, when you get in office. | ||
| Maybe they wanted adult supervision for me. | ||
| But yeah, I would get popcorn. | ||
| But Mike and I often would, bell would ring and we'd walk from Longworth, fourth floor, over a vote together. | ||
| And that's how we got to know each other very well. | ||
| It was a divided Congress back then, familiar to people right now, but do you think at that time it was a little bit less taboo to work across the aisle or was it pretty hard back then too? | ||
| Well, I think it's, I mean, one of the best kept secrets in America is that most of the people that get elected to Congress actually come there to actually do the job and to make progress. | ||
| They're here to advance an agenda, and Rah and I have different agendas and different policy prescriptions. | ||
| But I think we are living in a time when a lot of the rewards go to what I think is more performance art than policy. | ||
| And the thing that I appreciate about Rahm is while we differed, particularly after he led the charge for the Democrats to defeat the Republican majority in 2006. | ||
| 20 years later, you got over it. | ||
| Still too soon. | ||
| We won it back a couple years later. | ||
| Getting some PTSD here. | ||
| I would tell you, I will say this about Rom, that, and I still feel that way, that he was one of those people that When he told you that his conference was going to do something, they did it. | ||
| And that's the way, you know, democracy depends on heavy doses of civility. | ||
| And maintaining the ability to find things that we can agree on begins with civility. | ||
| And it was a different time back then. | ||
| What did civility look like for you back then? | ||
| I mean, look, I don't want to speak for the Republicans or for Mike on this situation. | ||
| The vice president is everybody knew when I took over the campaign committee for the House. | ||
| That was my job. | ||
| That was my responsibility. | ||
| It didn't mean that when we were in the halls and in committees, we weren't going to work together. | ||
| I didn't mean that. | ||
| And we do have different agendas. | ||
| Mike and I just saw each other right before we got here at the table. | ||
| First thing we always do. | ||
| He gives me a rundown on his kids. | ||
| I give him a rundown of my kids. | ||
| He has a son and a son-in-law in the armed forces. | ||
| I have two, out of my three children, are in the armed forces as well, same branch. | ||
| And we check in on each other all like that. | ||
| Parents before partisans? | ||
| Without a doubt. | ||
| And I always tease him about this because he knows this. | ||
| What am I about to? | ||
| He owes my son $10 from a bet on the 2008. | ||
| He owe it. | ||
| He's never paid. | ||
| But here's the thing. | ||
| Well, this is exactly what this table is for. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Fork it over. | |
| I want a 6% interest, not a 2% interest. | ||
| But the serious thing is, we disagreed on things, but we didn't see this as brave heart hunger games where we were going to try to kill each other. | ||
| Now, I do think, and I kind of, I'm resistant to this, because I don't think blaming social media for everything means you absolved yourself of your own judgment and responsibility. | ||
| But social media has forced people into ideological ghettos. | ||
| And it exacerbates, and the fundraising apparatus also exacerbates that. | ||
| So, you know, one of my first bills was the Great Lake Restoration Act to restore funding for the Great Lakes. | ||
| All the members of Congress from the Midwest who boarded the Great Lakes signed on to it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I'm chair of the Griple C. Women Beckham. | |
| It's President Bush that signs it into law. | ||
| Do you think that could happen now? | ||
| Yes, I do. | ||
| I mean, look, we've got today on my way over the National Defense Authorization Act is being debated. | ||
| And as Ram said, we both have members of our immediate family serving in the military. | ||
| And I think the ability to work together when it comes to our national defense, when it comes to national security, when it comes to regional issues, it's all still there. | ||
| It's all still there. | ||
| I do want to clear up the whole bet thing. | ||
| It was actually $10. | ||
| 2008, President Obama was running. | ||
| And Rah, who, you know, his kids apparently don't fall too far from the tree, as we say in Indiana, I ran into him a month before the election. | ||
| And Rah is sounding confident about President Obama's chances, then candidate Obama. | ||
| And his son looked at me defiantly and said, we're going to win Indiana. | ||
| And I, you're not going to win Indiana. | ||
| Nobody won Indiana since JFK. | ||
| And on the Democrat side, I lost the bet. | ||
| Zachariah's job at the age of 10 was to co-author the polling in Chicago across the country. | ||
| He got him started young. | ||
| This was his choice. | ||
| And he would take the train, et cetera, et cetera. | ||
| And he sees then Congressman Pence, and he says, no, Senator Obama's going to win. | ||
| And he says, okay, I'll bet you. | ||
| And I said, he goes $10. | ||
| And I just, every time I see him, I tease him. | ||
| I said, you owe $10 plus cumulative interest. | ||
| It compounded it. | ||
| That will be hanging over your head forever. | ||
| I intend to keep it hanging over. | ||
| I want to step on it. | ||
| I'm afraid of national security. | ||
| I'll also say foreign policy. | ||
| Look, Rah and I are going to differ on core issues. | ||
| We're going to talk about some of those. | ||
| I'm Pearl Life. | ||
| I don't apologize for it. | ||
| I know has a different view of that. | ||
| I think in terms of size and scope of government, Rahm and his party have supported solutions that I consider big government solutions, expansions of the welfare state. | ||
| But where I want to take a second and commend him is I'm grateful for the role you played as ambassador to Japan. | ||
| Thanks, Mr. President. | ||
| I think one of the accomplishments of our administration was that we changed the national consensus on China. | ||
| And up to that time, there were differing opinions about the approach to China. | ||
| Our administration took a strong stand, saying we're going to end this era of trade abuses, intellectual property theft, military provocations, human rights abuses. | ||
| And I will say that our ambassador to Japan was one of the most clarion voices in the Asian Pacific calling out China unapologetically. | ||
| And I've said that publicly. | ||
| I say it again today. | ||
| I'm grateful for it. | ||
| And obviously this morning, we all are heartened by the progress toward peace, the very idea that the hostages will be restored to their families. | ||
| Yeah, let's take a step back there for a minute. | ||
| It's deeply moving to me. | ||
| And I also want to acknowledge on issues affecting Israel, while we've had different views of leadership in Israel. | ||
| I'm a very great admirer of Prime Minister Netanyahu, but I recognize that Rahm, with a deep personal history, family history, your father fought in the War of Independence in Israel, has played a leading role in ensuring that our support for Israel is not partisan. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And that it to this day, with frankly, I'll say this, Rahm, is there are voices on the left that are challenging U.S. support for Israel. | ||
| There are also populist voices on the right that are beginning to question U.S. support for Israel. | ||
| But I believe the broad mainstream of the country is where we are. | ||
| Let me, can I return the favor? | ||
| Let me just, just really quickly, you'll get a chance to, because I do want to talk about this issue. | ||
| Just for those who are tuning in right now, momentous week here. | ||
| It does seem that the phase one of the peace deal proposed by President Trump has been agreed to by Israel, by Hamas, hostage exchange coming soon. | ||
| The killing is going to stop. | ||
| Still a long way to go. | ||
| I want you to just take a listen real quick to President Trump this week. | ||
| Take a listen. | ||
| The whole world came together, to be honest. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So many countries that you wouldn't have even thought of it. | |
| They came together. | ||
| The world has come together around this deal. | ||
| The President, they're talking about unity. | ||
| Do you both think that Democrats and Republicans can unify around this result, Rahm? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| First of all, look, one, and I have no problem saying it, President Trump deserves credit here. | ||
| Some in my party won't say that. | ||
| He does. | ||
| I also think it accrues to America's benefit. | ||
| And that is the United States is the essential power around the world. | ||
| We shouldn't back off from that responsibility. | ||
| And we just proved this in space, something that neither Russia, China, or any other country could have done what we just did. | ||
| And that's good for the United States, and that means power doesn't stay in the region. | ||
| It exudes and goes into other regions of how important. | ||
| I also want to call out either Bibi Una and Yahoo or the leadership of Hamas who have done this if it wasn't also pressure from the Israeli public or the Palestinians in Gaza. | ||
| They deserve a call out for their own pressure, never giving up going down to the vigils for the hostages, never giving up in the sense of pressuring today in an election Hamas couldn't win. | ||
| And they know that. | ||
| And so to me, this is an example of, yes, President Trump and his administration, I had no problem saying that. | ||
| But one thing I do know about the Middle East, and it's not a but part, this is the first chapter of what comes next, not the last chapter of what just closed. | ||
| Where this goes, will the president administration stay, not only engage, but shape this to something better? | ||
| And the second thing is, and we have an agreement on another issue, Ukraine. | ||
| Will the president take the lessons of how he applied pressure on B.B. Netanyahu to apply pressure on Putin, who's in a very vulnerable, weak position across the globe and in the region and in this war, which is a huge mistake and he knows it. | ||
| Will he take this lesson and do what he has never done in his career, apply pressure to Putin? | ||
| Well, I mean, it's pretty remarkable that we are launching a show called Ceasefire on a week where there is a ceasefire in the Middle East. | ||
| You both have been part of negotiations that are high stakes like this. | ||
| You have experience in the executive branch and in Middle East politics. | ||
| Can you give us some behind the scenes insight as to how something like this comes together and how do you make it last? | ||
| Well, I think it takes. | ||
| And I'm grateful for Rahm speaking plainly about giving President Trump credit here. | ||
| Look, I think that the President's consistent support for Israel doing what it had to do after the horrors of October 7th, two years ago. | ||
| I mean, Dasha, I traveled a few months after October 7th to communities that were struck. | ||
| There were literally still bullet holes in the walls and blood on the carpets in Kaferaza. | ||
| I went to the field where the young people had been brutalized and cut down and murdered. | ||
| And the ability to stay with Israel as they did what needed to be done and the president's relentless pursuit for peace here and that of his team I think is to be commended. | ||
| In the spirit of your show though, I will say I strongly agree that we ought to welcome this first step. | ||
| Pray for the comfort of the families who will be laying to rest, loved ones that have been restored to them. | ||
| But it's important that next steps happen. | ||
| In my judgment, it's absolutely essential that Hamas be disarmed. | ||
| It's absolutely essential that a new governing body be established in Gaza. | ||
| We were in the Congress when the Bush administration made what I believe was a historic error of forcing the election. | ||
| Turning Gaza over to what would become the clause of Hamas and literally bulldozed synagogues in Gaza and essentially remove the Jewish community that there's got to be a different future here. | ||
| But this 20-point plan, I believe, is a framework for that. | ||
| What I would say is, look, in Congress, across lines, in the region, trust is essential. | ||
| And the ability of the President of the United States, realizing B.B. Netanyahu, who, in my view, made a massive critical strategic error bombing Qatar, massive. | ||
| Forcing him publicly then to apologize, get on the phone, showing Qatar that leadership, showing Qatar whether it's a security treaty or not, we're going to put that aside because we debate for a long time. | ||
| And then aligning the Arab world, meaning Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey most principally, to force Hamas, while he pressured and showed that he was willing to pressure Bibi at the right time, created the conditions that basically you could say yes or yes, sir, but those were the only two choices. | ||
| A lot of my White House sources said it was that moment that led to this. | ||
| Dasha, on this thing to me, having gone through Oslo, Y Plantation, Camp David with President Clinton towards the end, in the end of the day, what I think is missing in Washington is this is the first of what's next. | ||
| Now, this ball can go that way, it can go that way, it can die and not bounce again. | ||
| So, the question is, will the administration and all the other partners seize this as an opportunity to do something and take this in an advance at 20 yards rather than two yards? | ||
| But Ron makes a really good point here, and that is the direct involvement of the president that you served as chief of staff or president. | ||
| I served alongside Juan. | ||
| I'll never forget when Secretary of State Pompeo and others had reached a point of negotiations with the Taliban for bringing an end to the Afghanistan war. | ||
| The president insisted on a phone call with the head of the Taliban. | ||
| Now, I have very strong opinions about the Taliban and their brutality and ruthlessness and oppression of women and destruction of other cultures. | ||
| But I'll never forget the president had the head of the Taliban on the phone in the Oval Office. | ||
| And the deal was, look, you can never harm another American soldier, the deal's off. | ||
| And we went 18 months without an American casualty in Afghanistan. | ||
| He said you have to work with the Afghan national government and you can't harbor terrorist organizations. | ||
| That was the framework of the deal. | ||
| And I'll never forget hearing the Taliban leader say, yes, Mr. President, yes, don't underestimate the past, and Mike knows this, having served two presidents. | ||
| The power of that Oval Office, the power of the voice of the President of the United States, is the credibility of this country. | ||
| And that's why I say China couldn't do what we just did. | ||
| And you now have Turkey, Egypt, Gulf, Saudi Arabia, aligned with America. | ||
| You can move this 20 yards rather than two yards if you decide. | ||
| I want to talk about that power of the presidency in the context of the US. | ||
| Not to break the vision. | ||
| Frankly, when the Taliban broke the deal in the Biden administration and they moved on Masr el-Sharif in the north, and we continued the withdrawal. | ||
| To me, that was a catastrophic error that resulted in the disastrous withdrawal, very likely emboldened Vladimir Putin toward Ukraine. | ||
| But I think the president's word, the president keeping his word, seeing it through. | ||
| One of the things that President Trump said about Israel and the peace deal this week was he has said all parties will be treated fairly. | ||
| And to your point, I think he's created the conditions where people can accept it. | ||
| Gentlemen, I want to move us along to another issue. | ||
| We've seen big progress in the Middle East where we haven't seen progress is on this government shutdown. | ||
| I want to get both of your perspectives on how each of your parties is handling this moment. | ||
| Mr. Ambassador, Mr. Mayer, we'll start with you. | ||
| Look, having, now again, talking about PTSD, I lived through the 95 shutdown. | ||
| I was advising the White House when I was mayor about the 2014. | ||
| So one is I would say the Trump White House has made a mistake because you could have made this a Democratic shutdown. | ||
| And because of the way the president acted, they co-own it, if not own it. | ||
| What do you mean by that? | ||
| Because it's not being perceived as a Democratic force shutdown. | ||
| It's being perceived, if anything, pocks on both your houses, if not driven by the Trump. | ||
| So they've avoided the downside. | ||
| If I was a Democrat, I would sharpen the message right here. | ||
| You spent $20 billion bailing out Argentina. | ||
| And 20 million Americans are about to lose their health care. | ||
| And I'd make this a really binary choice that I think they're making a good faith ether, and they're winning the argument about health care. | ||
| You saw Congresswoman Green already came out and said we should restore AZA funding. | ||
| So it's clearly they're winning the argument and the pain level. | ||
| It's about pain threshold. | ||
| You wrote a $20 billion check to Argentina for bailout, which we were out of the money already. | ||
| It's lost. | ||
| And 20 million Americans are about to lose their health care. | ||
| And I think in this case, the government shutdown is the members of Congress are going to feel the pain when you have air traffic controllers, military families not being paid. | ||
| That's when they're all going to come together. | ||
| You've given advice to Democrats. | ||
| What advice would you give to Republicans? | ||
| Is there a way for both parties to win here? | ||
| This is the old chief of staff. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| This is the chief of staff. | ||
| Chief of staff. | ||
| We're going to have a clean CR vote. | ||
| Republicans win the clean. | ||
| One hour later, we're going to having a vote on the premiums. | ||
| Same day, same time. | ||
| Same day, back-to-back. | ||
| You get your clean CR, so you could declare victory. | ||
| Government's reopened. | ||
| We get a vote on the ACA bill. | ||
| Everybody knows what the premium is. | ||
| It's not a long negotiation. | ||
| We're not going to vote on opening and we get that get a negotiation. | ||
| We know what it is. | ||
| You know what the deal is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You can do a one-year extension with a premium support. | |
| Back-to-back, same day. | ||
| Everybody gets a win. | ||
| Mr. Vice President, what do you think of that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, he'd be sitting in the office talking about this. | |
| Say, I want to see the vote. | ||
| I want to see the labor. | ||
| We live through the longest shutdown in history that there may be a new record set. | ||
| Do you think there will be? | ||
| Look, this is a Democrat shutdown, and Republicans have been trying to make that case. | ||
| But I don't disagree with Rahm in the sense that I don't know they've made it as effectively as they could in this situation. | ||
| Look, I will go back to, and Rah and I, you know, we battled over Obamacare when he managed to get that passed into law. | ||
| I was also 6'2 then. | ||
| I've spent a lot of years trying to repeal Obamacare and reform health care in this country. | ||
| I think the argument Republicans could make and should make is that during the early days of the Biden administration, in the name of a COVID response, premium support that largely goes to big insurance companies was dramatically increased. | ||
| But it was sunset. | ||
| It was supposed to go away the end of this year. | ||
| I think Republicans could make that case. | ||
| It's a case for limited government and fiscal responsibility. | ||
| You would know that they have not made that case in the middle of the year. | ||
| I think they could make the case much more effectively. | ||
| That's what they would do if I was the Democrats. | ||
| I think they could make the case much more effectively. | ||
| Now, that being said, what we may agree on is at the end of the day, the person that will end this shutdown will be President Donald Trump. | ||
| The president has the ability, and I think he signaled a willingness to resolve some issues to bring people together. | ||
| And I would tell you, again, we're back to a couple guys with kids in the military. | ||
| I mean, the idea that people are wearing the uniform of the United States. | ||
| I was with a border guard yesterday in southern Arizona. | ||
| I got one word. | ||
| He's not being paid. | ||
| What's your one word? | ||
| If I was beyond Argentina, 20 million Americans living, I would start a clock to November 1. | ||
| That's when everybody's going to get their premium alert. | ||
| So that's the concern for Republicans, right? | ||
| They are going to own on November 1, it's only two and a half weeks away, they're going to own every premium increase, whether you're in ACA or not, because it's in the consciousness of the city. | ||
| Because you say, Mr. Vice President, that's the only thing. | ||
| And you're setting up 2026. | ||
| I think this is, I'm not here to give advice for Republicans. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I will make my day. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, if you say that the subsidies, you know, this is a temporary solution, right? | |
| We run the risk of wrecking your show. | ||
| You were role models first. | ||
| Now you're thinking about it. | ||
| No, no. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What we're saying to you is that ceasefire lasting in small C letters. | |
| I'm somebody that has always believed that greater transparency in health care, empowering the American people to be health care consumers, health savings accounts like President Obama permitted me to introduce into Medicaid when I was governor of the state of Indiana, and it was enormously successful. | ||
| That's a pathway for a different vision than Obamacare, which I would argue has largely failed. | ||
| People weren't able to keep their doctors. | ||
| The premium's gone up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Health care has gone up. | |
| It's about 15 years down the line. | ||
| In the spirit of this show, I will tell you, I think, look, you can't beat a program without a program. | ||
| Republicans have an obligation to articulate a vision for health care reform. | ||
| And until we do, we're going to end up shoveling more and more money to failed Obamacare. | ||
| They can't take it away once people have it. | ||
| That's the part and stuff. | ||
| I want to tell you one anecdote he won't remember. | ||
| If it's in the spirit of the show. | ||
| The spirit of the ceasefire. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| George Bush was coming through the halls. | ||
| It was some ceremonial thing in the rotunda. | ||
| He was coming out the house side. | ||
| And I grabbed Mike and I said, come on, President Bush is done. | ||
| Let's go see him together. | ||
| Bush is walking, sees us, and he goes, the unholy duo. | ||
| And he goes, is it unholy or is it a duo? | ||
| I think both today. | ||
| I think both today. | ||
| I mean, what is your advice, though, to Republicans? | ||
| Because health care is an issue that Republicans have struggled on, but Republicans have not been able to figure out health care. | ||
| Well, this is not going to help them. | ||
| I mean, shutdown aside, what can they do to get stronger on it? | ||
| Well, you know, it's the old rule of politics that Mike just articulated. | ||
| You can't beat something with nothing. | ||
| And every time we have proposed, whether it's Medicare, Medicaid, or ACA slash Obamacare, the only thing they do is keep trying to either end it or in any way try to basically debilitate it with cuts. | ||
| And I think this is only going to extend the argument about health care as a primary in this area. | ||
| The only time that Republicans actually did something, which we resisted, was the expansion of Medicare under President Bush on the prescription drugs for seniors. | ||
| But that's the only time they... | ||
| Which I opposed. | ||
| I... | ||
| Consistently. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The memories here are very, very good. | ||
| But here's the thing is that when you say what would be my advice is you are literally resisting things, reinforcing a negative. | ||
| And the biggest issue on health care today is not the expansion which Democrats made. | ||
| The biggest issue going forward is that you have uncontrolled insurance companies determining what a doctor can tell a patient or prescribe a patient and what kind of medications you get. | ||
| And I bet you you could draft a bill that these and I was going to agree. | ||
| I bet you the Republicans could point out that those premium increases that Democrats are going on the wall to defend go to insurance companies. | ||
| And so, you know, but I honestly do believe, and look, I want to give some credit to your old boss. | ||
| Indiana had a pilot program to introduce health savings accounts in Medicaid. | ||
| It had never been done before. | ||
| I wanted to dramatically expand that program, which essentially free market, empowers patients. | ||
| I received great resistance in the Obama administration until I had a chance to speak to President Obama on the tarmac at the Arizona, or excuse me, the Evansville airport. | ||
| There's some pictures around the internet you can find fairly easily. | ||
| We spoke for about 30 minutes on the tarmac. | ||
| And he looked at me and said, I'm not philosophically opposed to what you're suggesting. | ||
| And we ended up working with the leadership at Center for Medicaid Services. | ||
| We received a waiver. | ||
| And we were able, with a Republican vision of empowering patients, first dollar benefit, health savings accounts. | ||
| That to me is the way forward. | ||
| And look, the other dirty little secret in Washington, D.C. is everybody actually wants to solve problems for Americans. | ||
| And the issue of affordability of health care, first dollar benefits for health care, particularly for the underserved community, is a goal that I think Republicans have an obligation to bring Republican principles to. | ||
| I want to look at the future here for a moment because I think the future is bright for you both. | ||
| But someone may have some plans in the works here. | ||
| I saw you were in Iowa not so long ago saying you're thinking about running for president. | ||
| Are you running? | ||
| And what's your time? | ||
| I've been in the thinking phase, as I answered your question. | ||
| You're not going to break the news here on Ceasefire? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| All right. | ||
| I haven't made a decision. | ||
| Mike knows this. | ||
| You make a decision first in your gut and probably also first with your family. | ||
| And that discussion is more important than doing it here on Ceasefire. | ||
| And I'm not there. | ||
| Well, Mr. Vice President, what do you think about Rahm running for president? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you want to see him in the running? | |
| Look, having run for president, I always tell people I ran for president in 2023, not so where you'd notice. | ||
| But we got in that primary. | ||
| And, you know, it is a very deep personal decision. | ||
| I respect anybody that's willing to step forward, not only at the national level, but step forward, run for Congress, run for a state legislative seat, run for mayor. | ||
| You're going to find out, as he found out, that it's one thing, all due respect, Dasha, it's one thing to be on television and to be a commentator and to reflect on things. | ||
| Governing is a different thing. | ||
| And, you know, I, for my part, my parents, you wouldn't know this, my parents grew up on the south side of Chicago. | ||
| All my extended family is from there. | ||
| I love Chicago. | ||
| It's broken my heart what's happened in certain precincts in Chicago and the violence that's happened. | ||
| I give Rah a lot of credit for having tried to drive education reform and make progress in Chicago. | ||
| His career led in a different direction. | ||
| But I think at the end of the day, I have a lot of respect for anybody that's willing to step forward. | ||
| Can I say one thing? | ||
| Look, Mike's been vice president and he's been a governor. | ||
| I've been a chief of staff mayor without going through the resume. | ||
| The one thing we both know as mayor and governor, that when you have big choices, and this is true also in the Oval Office, the choices are usually bad and worse. | ||
| And you've got to have the judgment and the character to know the difference between bad and worse. | ||
| And, you know, we'll both make, we've made decisions to run, not to run, et cetera, in our career at different points in our lives. | ||
| I'll evaluate that. | ||
| But I think that the key thing, as I've said to you before, is do you have something to say? | ||
| I happen to believe about the American dream and the importance of education to achieving that dream. | ||
| And it's basically unaffordable to the American people. | ||
| If I got something to say that nobody else is saying it in a way that I feel is important, and I'm not going to look back in life and say, I would have, coulda, should have, then I'll run. | ||
| If I can't, and I don't think I have something to say on this very important topic, because I think we're at a crossroads as a country, not a ceasefire, but a crossroads, then I'll say it. | ||
| Can I ask you both, when it comes to the future of your opposing party? | ||
| So, Mr. Vice President, the future of the Democratic Party, do you want to see it go in the direction of a Rahm Emanuel or say an AOC? | ||
| Oh, I would never want it to go in the direction of a Rahm Emmanuel. | ||
| I like him on television. | ||
| Stay there. | ||
| Look, I went to the inauguration in January. | ||
| And frankly, I was overwhelmed by the number of Republicans and Democrats that thanked me for being there after the difficulties of four years ago. | ||
| But I knew it was my duty to be there, to celebrate again the peaceful transfer of power. | ||
| But I had a senator come up to me, Dasha, and put his hand on my shoulder, and he says, great to see you, Mr. Vice President. | ||
| Said, this is a funny business we're in. | ||
| And I looked him in the eye and I said, it's not a business. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's a country. | |
| And he said, you're right. | ||
| At the end of the day, and I don't think I serve with anybody better politics than Rah Emmanuel. | ||
| And I know he has respect for me and my abilities. | ||
| But at the end of the day, we're all Americans. | ||
| We really have large challenges facing the country. | ||
| You've got, we have a national debt of more than $37 trillion that the one consensus in Washington is that both political parties today are essentially saying, we're going to do nothing about the national debt. | ||
| We're going to leave it to our children and grandchildren. | ||
| We have, as Rahm said very forcefully in his role in Japan, China continues its military provocations. | ||
| It continues to menace in the Asia Pacific. | ||
| Russia continues to storm forward in Ukraine. | ||
| We've made progress in the Middle East, but there are real issues that we're going to confront as a nation, and we're going to have to figure out a way to talk to each other. | ||
| We have like 10 seconds. | ||
| Two seconds. | ||
| One, what the Republican Party is missing is more Mike Pence. | ||
| It's become a member. | ||
| No, it's more Mike Pence. | ||
| If you had a Republican Congress and Senate that was more like Mike Pence, there'd be guardrails and bumpers against what President Trump's trying to do. | ||
| It's an unhinged, he has no control, there's no control, there's no stopping, there's no kind of pause here, and it's a mistake. | ||
| And the Republicans in Congress and Senate own what's happening here, and obviously we disagree about what that is. | ||
| I think this is a very bad moment. | ||
| Second, one thing I learned in Japan is a lot about America. | ||
| There is nothing China's doing that scares me. | ||
| What scares me about the future is division in America and the fact that we see each other as enemies, not as Americans. | ||
| Mike and I disagree about 99.9% of the things. | ||
| But I never doubted his commitment to the country and his commitment to public service. | ||
| Today, we have a sense that we are in a politics. | ||
| And I put this on the president. | ||
| His job is to find the ceasefire. | ||
| His job is to lead and not have a moment where every American is pitted against another American. | ||
| I joke, I did a bike when I was mayor, I did a bike trip around Lake Michigan, and I found that the worse the cell phone service was, the nicer people are. | ||
| Well, gentlemen, I think these guinea pigs have ended as role models. | ||
| So thank you so much for being here for our inaugural episode. | ||
| A ceasefire. | ||
| Appreciate you both. | ||
| Thank you, Josh. | ||
| Let's turn now to this week's C-SPAN Flashback, where we dig deep into the video archives to show you a moment in political history that's eerily similar to what's happening today. | ||
| The year was 2007. | ||
| While appearing at a Senate oversight hearing, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez responded to questions about the dismissal of several U.S. attorneys. | ||
| Take a listen. | ||
| I'm very concerned. | ||
| I've had two of them asked to resign in my state from major jurisdictions with major cases ongoing with substantially good records as prosecutors. | ||
| You deny that you have asked, your office has asked United States attorneys to resign in the past year? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes or no? | |
| Yes. | ||
| No, I don't deny that. | ||
| What I'm saying is, but that happens, that happens during every administration during different periods for different reasons. | ||
| And so the fact that that's happened, quite frankly, some people should view that as a sign of good management. | ||
| What we do is we make an evaluation about the performance of individuals. | ||
| And I have a responsibility to the people in your district that we have the best possible people in these positions. | ||
| And that's the reason why changes sometimes have to be made, although there are a number of reasons why changes get made and why people leave on their own. | ||
| I think I would never ever make a change in a United States Attorney position for political reasons or if it would in any way jeopardize an ongoing serious investigation. | ||
| I just would not do it. | ||
| Gonzalez resigned later that year amid mounting criticism over the firings of U.S. attorneys and his management of the department. | ||
| President George W. Bush reluctantly accepted the resignation, stating Gonzalez had been unfairly criticized for political reasons. | ||
| Have you ever watched the politics play out here in Washington and asked yourself, why are they doing that? | ||
| Well, we've got two political pros from both sides of the aisle to help explain. | ||
| Sean Spicer, former White House press secretary during the first Trump administration and host of the Sean Spicer Show, and Faz Shekir, senior advisor to Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders. | ||
| He was also Sanders' campaign manager during the 2020 presidential campaign. | ||
| Thank you both so much for doing this. | ||
| I'm going to ask you guys to kind of take off your surrogate hat and put on your strategist hat here for ceasefire and explain to us some of what's going on. | ||
| I do want to start with the big news, of course, the phase one of the peace deal that's been agreed to between Israel and Hamas. | ||
| Sean, how big of a deal is this for President Trump? | ||
| What does this mean for the White House? | ||
| Well, a couple things. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think it's big for him personally, right? | |
| I think the idea that he got this deal together on a personal level is huge. | ||
| On a national level, it's huge. | ||
| Politically, domestically, generally speaking, we don't give a lot of credit for foreign policy wins, so I don't know how much it translates in terms of like for the midterms or something, but I think that this is a personal point of privilege and pride for the president to solve an issue of this magnitude, to bring these parties together. | ||
| He likes talking about being a president of peace. | ||
| So this is just another big example. | ||
| And I think the other big win, I think, is the unconventional nature of it, right? | ||
| This was not career diplomats sitting in some room in Geneva. | ||
| Jared Kushner brought back something. | ||
| And that to me is, again, just a positive sign for this idea that not everything gets solved by career diplomats, bureaucrats. | ||
| Some outside thinking is healthy to the process. | ||
| Faz, what do you think about the Democrat response here and how should the party walk this line? | ||
| Because so much of the pattern for Democrats is to resist or criticize what Trump has done. | ||
| What's the play here? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, you've seen in Democratic Party politics that this issue has become much, much more emotionally salient over the past couple of years. | |
| And I agree with everything that Sean Spicer said. | ||
| And I think that, you know, as someone who disagrees with a lot of things that Donald Trump does, it's a significant accomplishment and two years in the making. | ||
| So I'm glad that we're there. | ||
| For Democrats, I think this is only the beginning of a rebuilding of Gaza, quite frankly. | ||
| And not to lose sight of that, that the whole country has been decimated. | ||
| Education system, electricity system, UNEVA hospitals, all decimated. | ||
| So there's got to be a rebuilding of society. | ||
| And from the perspective of just wanting Israel to succeed and be a safe and secure nation, you want it to be living in peace and security with neighbors who are also succeeding. | ||
| And so for those who care deeply about Israel's security, I hope that the investment is to make sure Gaza stands up as a strong neighbor and one who takes care of its citizens well. | ||
| Well, we've got steps forward there, but we have some steps back. | ||
| Castellamate here in Washington. | ||
| Let's talk about the shutdown. | ||
| Faz, I want to start with you because Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was really roundly criticized by the left wing of the party the first time around in March when he voted to keep the government open. | ||
| How much is that playing into his calculus here, you think? | ||
|
unidentified
|
A fair amount, I think. | |
| I think he realizes later that that was probably a misstep. | ||
| At the time, you'll remember that Doge was full force, like firing everybody willy-nilly, even froze Medicaid at some point. | ||
| And it was, you know, there was a revolt in this nation and he didn't meet that moment and didn't channel that energy. | ||
| Now we're in a moment where I think he's shifted his politics and he's found an opportunity. | ||
| To his credit, I think he's got a wedge that is correct. | ||
| That you're about, what, I think your previous guests were talking about, we're about a month and a half from where ACA tax credits expire and literally health care premiums. | ||
| There's a ticking clock. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Exactly. | |
| And so, you know, Mike Johnson, Speaker Johnson's best argument is, listen, guys, we shouldn't take care of this in the government funding bill. | ||
| We can deal with this later. | ||
| And those of us who cover Washington know you're like maybe 30 legislative days away from the end of the year. | ||
| There isn't much time, is my point. | ||
| So if you wanted to resolve it, Schumer and Jeffrey's, to their credit, have got the right issue at the right time and say, well, we can resolve this right now, and we have to. | ||
| Well, Sean, for Republicans, do you think they're ⁇ how closely are they watching this? | ||
| Do you think they understand the resolve that Democrats have right now because of everything that Faza's saying? | ||
| That's a great question because I think, look, Republicans know they're five Democrat votes away in the Senate from moving this forward. | ||
| There's a couple options that they have, right? | ||
| So one, they can hope that someone like Gene Jaheen from New Hampshire starts to create a deal independently of Schumer. | ||
| And that's where I think there's a lot of hope, that we can break off some of these folks, maybe two, maybe three, and then hope the other two come. | ||
| So you can do that. | ||
| Two, you could go nuclear and say you only need 50 votes, right? | ||
| Which is another possibility. | ||
| Or which, frankly, I think the party has missed an opportunity on my side, which is they should be jamming them on the individual appropriations. | ||
| They should have started with defense. | ||
| They should be paying the military and say, great. | ||
| And to my mind, I think this was a huge missed opportunity for the Republicans. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They should have said, you want to hold up the entirety of government funding? | |
| Fine. | ||
| But we're going to start passing them one by one. | ||
| We're going to name conferees, defense approach to do it first. | ||
| Force Democrats to vote for or against military members getting paid. | ||
| And then if they agree to that, then you go to the next one of the 11 remaining ones. | ||
| But this was a strategic misstep, I think, by Republicans, not to jam them on that and just hope that we can wait out the government funding piece. | ||
| I also think that the seven weeks thing, I get why they did it, but start to narrow that. | ||
| This is one where you could have sequenced and said, fine, what if we open the government for two weeks and then we can talk to government? | ||
| But at some point, we had the higher ground and now it's becoming a little shaky. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Strategically on this guy, sincere question. | |
| What would you say about ACA tax credits? | ||
| What should the Republican posture be? | ||
| So the first thing is I think we should agree to sequence it, have this open the government. | ||
| Then we should have that discussion. | ||
| But I think that there is two issues. | ||
| One, there's a lot of people who need those, right? | ||
| But we also, there's plenty of room for reform in them. | ||
| Too much money is going to insurance companies, something that Senator Sanders would probably agree. | ||
| And Tony Fabrizio, Trump's chief pollster, his polling is showing that Republicans are going to be in a big mess in the midterms if they don't. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't agree with that, but I also think that projecting out what you're going to look like 14 months is ridiculous in politics. | |
| That being said, I think we have a much stronger way if we took advantage of the fact that we have the majorities. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Senator Sanders is someone who's been very outspoken about the amount of money that insurance companies are making on this. | |
| We could have come to him and said, I'll tell you what, let's do a one-week deal. | ||
| We'll agree to some stuff on ACA where we really reform how much money is going to insurance companies, making sure that the subsidies are targeted to people who need them. | ||
| And I think we probably could have driven a wedge among some in the Democratic Party, maybe not all, but enough to get us to 60 votes. | ||
| Saz, do you agree? | ||
| Do you think Republicans kind of messed this up a little bit? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I haven't, you know, it'd be interesting if they listened to Sean and had a proposal, because we haven't seen it, right? | |
| And so it would have been interesting to see, okay, you actually literally want to solve a fundamental problem that affects tens of millions of Americans that their health care premiums are going to unnecessarily rise. | ||
| I agree with Senator Sanders, obviously, his campaign manager, that the subsidization of United Health Group and Centene and other health insurance companies is not the best way to try to solve health care in America. | ||
| In my view, it's been Medicare for All, an expansion of a government-provided health care that other leading nations provide to their people. | ||
| So I'd like to see that personally. | ||
| However, if you're at the moment, if you just care about people, and I think one of the goals of this show is that let's orient around the fact that there's commonalities. | ||
| We have to solve problems for people. | ||
| People are going to face unnecessary cost hikes. | ||
| And in my view, because the One Big Beautiful Bill factually made this possible, let's solve it. | ||
| And if you came to an whatever the approach was that Sean's suggesting, you could probably find an agreement. | ||
| But can I just say the one thing that, again, and I will say we're losing the argument on this. | ||
| So you may not agree with me on the substance of this, but the irony is that Democrats created this problem, right? | ||
| Because when you implement policy, you can either do it permanent. | ||
| And Trump, we face the same side on the Republican Party, where in Trump won, we passed tax credits at sunset in seven years. | ||
| And suddenly we ended up, luckily Trump was back when he did, so we could fix it and make it permanent. | ||
| But it was our problem to fix. | ||
| Democrats put these health care subsidies in and sunset them. | ||
| So we wouldn't be dealing with them. | ||
| They made them permanent from the beginning, which they did. | ||
| A pretty clever historian could address this. | ||
| But I think the beauty is, and to Fox's, you know, his side's team credit, we're owning this. | ||
| Like, they're the ones who set up the sunset, and yet then they're turning around and saying, you're going to let them expire. | ||
| So back in 2013, I want to hop in the time machine real quick, years before his first term, President Trump weighed in on who is to blame in the event of a shutdown. | ||
| Take a listen. | ||
| It always has to be the top. | ||
| I mean, problems start from the top, and they have to get solved from the top, and the president's the leader, and he's got to get everybody in a room, and he's got to lead. | ||
| You know, the interesting thing is in 25 years and 50 years and 100 years from now, when the government is, you know, they talk about the government shutdown, they're going to be talking about the president of the United States. | ||
| They're going to be discussing one person. | ||
| So I really think the pressure is on the president. | ||
| So a decade plus later, what is the president's calculus in this moment? | ||
| You think, is there any deal without Trump? | ||
| I do. | ||
| I mean, I think, as I said, I think there's a sequencing deal, which is we agree that we'll have a vote on ACA subsidies if you agree to reopen the government. | ||
| And remember, almost every single Democratic leader in the past has said you should never hold the government hostage when it comes to funding. | ||
| I mean, this is the irony of the debate we're having is kind of ridiculous. | ||
| The Republicans didn't put one policy that they wanted in the extension in the CR, the continuing resolution. | ||
| It literally was a straight out CR. | ||
| We were basically having a discussion that says the Democrats should be able to discuss the issues that they want, i.e. health care, but we should have nothing. | ||
| So what do you think is in Trump's head right now? | ||
| Who's in his ear and why is he approaching it the way he is right now? | ||
| I think, I mean, both Johnson and Thune are definitely talking to him. | ||
| Obviously, he's got a team at the White House, very politically savvy, and they're telling him we're on strong ground here. | ||
| The other thing is, I've got to be honest, I was here during the government shutdown in 1996, went without pay during that one. | ||
| I've been through a ton of these. | ||
| This is the least impactful government shutdown that I've ever seen. | ||
| You walk down the mall here in Washington, D.C., the Smithsonians are still open. | ||
| The Statue of Liberty is still open. | ||
| I don't think that this particular shutdown is being felt by the American people the same way that a lot of others, unless you are a federal worker who lives paycheck to paycheck. | ||
| And those people are real, and I don't mean to minimize the impact that those folks have. | ||
| But I'm saying for a lot of people in America, they don't feel the same. | ||
| They're not seeing essential services being withdrawn. | ||
| They're not having a vacation cut short because a national park is closed. | ||
| And that does make a difference in the calculus, in the strategy on your urgency to fix things. | ||
| What about that strategy on the Democrat side? | ||
| What are Schumer and Jeffries thinking? | ||
| What are the pressures on them in this moment? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, in this case, you mentioned that it might have probably been better off had they tried to engage in this tactic in March, but here we are now. | |
| And they did an action this time that they didn't do last time, which is they demanded a meeting with the president. | ||
| And to this point, what is a little bit surprising for me, Sean knows much more about how President Trump thinks, is that he's largely been absent from a lot of this. | ||
| For someone who generally likes to be the man in the arena, calling the shots, telling everybody, hey, this is what we're going to do on a daily basis, we're in the midst of an extended government shutdown now in which he is mostly a commentator. | ||
| He is not the convener. | ||
| He is not showing that he is in charge. | ||
| He's certainly on Gaza on other issues. | ||
| It's very clear the president is leading. | ||
| And on this one, he's quiet. | ||
| But it's different. | ||
| That's what, because we're not negotiating policy, right? | ||
| And that's what's different. | ||
| It's, hey, open the government, then let's negotiate. | ||
| So if we open the government again and then we're having a discussion about ACA, what we're doing on subsidies or not, I think then he gets much more engaged on that discussion. | ||
| But right now there's no policy discussion. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But he said the Republican position is either you open it or you don't and then we'll talk. | |
| So he has been engaged. | ||
| He held the meeting, laid out the lines of communication, what we need to do. | ||
| I think if we open the government back up, he'd be well engaged into that discussion. | ||
|
unidentified
|
My impression was listening to him, Dasha, was that, you know, when the president said, I'm talking to Democrats, and everyone was kind of confused in this that he was kind of like, wait, is he actually negotiating with Democrats? | |
| And Johnson and Thun were kind of like, hey, no, there's no negotiations. | ||
| He kind of backed off of that statement. | ||
| My instinct was that that's the kind of leadership we would have assumed of a Donald Trump is that he is going to go call Chuck Schumer, talk to him directly. | ||
| So that's not happening. | ||
| So what's the line for Democrats now? | ||
| I mean, how long should they hold out here? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think you've got an opportunity, as we talked about with ACA subsidies. | |
| So you're here, let's say, you know, a few days, a week plus in to this thing. | ||
| And I agree with where Rahm in your previous segment was talking about, where if you get to a place where you say we're going to resolve ACA subsidies, it doesn't have to be in the government funding bill. | ||
| But the agreement that this issue is real and must be tackled and voted on and resolved is a win for the Democratic Party and win for a lot of people who are going to deal with unaffordable health care costs. | ||
| Let's talk about another big moment this week. | ||
| FBI Director James Comey was arraigned. | ||
| If you were working in the White House, Sean, would you advise further criminal prosecutions of other perceived political foes like Letitia James and Adam Schiff, or do you think there's a potential danger here? | ||
| I think the White House shouldn't be directing it. | ||
| The Department of Justice should be deciding whether somebody has broken the law or not. | ||
| So the answer from the White House should be the Department of Justice should investigate anybody who's broken the law and if they have, proceed with the appropriate charges. | ||
| Faz, how much should Democrats be jumping on this? | ||
| I've seen, you know, Dems have been responding to everything that is unprecedented out of this administration, which is a lot of things, right? | ||
| How much should they be focused on stuff like this versus the kitchen table issues that we were talking about? | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's a big concern, and I think the nation, if you look at polling, that the president's instincts occasionally to act in authoritarian ways to grab power and violate the norms of independence where you would expect them to be, whether it be the Federal Reserve or in the media or university presidents or even in deploying the National Guard, that there should be a democracy, not an authoritarian ruler whose own whims and desires govern such things. | |
| And in my view on this, I hope that Democrats are the bulwark. | ||
| That's what they expect of a check and a balance, that every one of these actions demands a thoughtful and organized response to them. | ||
| That isn't to say you oppose every single one of them, but you do demand questions about them. | ||
| You pursue them. | ||
| You investigate them. | ||
| You've got to be a little careful. | ||
| I mean, you look at Letitia James, for example, or Adam Schiff. | ||
| When you start putting down in public documents where your primary residence is twice, and I don't know if I were a Democrat, I'd be too quick to jump into defending any of those actions without knowing the facts. | ||
| I mean, the documents are out there. | ||
| So I would be a little cautious, whether it was my party or another one, on urging anybody to go out there and defend some of this behavior without having all the facts. | ||
| So the gentleman that was just sitting in your seat earlier, Mr. Mike Pence, former vice president, he talked about Republicans and small government and how he disagreed with Rob Emmanuel on that. | ||
| The president sending troops into American cities, is that a good look for the White House right now? | ||
| Or is there a political risk there in that expansion of presidential power? | ||
| So there's a couple things. | ||
| There's the political piece, right? | ||
| And I do think that it's kind of fascinating to me as just a political wonk that you have a president in his second term spending political capital on people who didn't vote for him largely, right? | ||
| So sending people into blue states, to blue cities, to create safety for them and to alleviate crime. | ||
| That to me is actually a fascinating sort of dynamic. | ||
| Instead of the president using all of his power to help his allies that got him elected, hopefully help him in the midterms, he's going places that aren't going to politically reward him. | ||
| That's number one. | ||
| Number two. | ||
| So why is he doing that? | ||
| Because I think he, I actually, I've known the guy long enough to know that he actually generally believes this. | ||
| Whether it's New York City, Washington. | ||
| So you don't think it's a purely political calculus? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| If it was politically calculus, there's a lot more ways. | ||
| Think about the backlash that he gets in some cases. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why not go to cities where you would get rewarded and thanked and places? | |
| That's how you, I mean, whether you're Republican or Democrat, no political strategist says, hey, let's go into things where we have a potential of a downside. | ||
| You want to go in things where you're going to get a guaranteed win. | ||
| So I think politically this was risky, but it's for the right reasons. | ||
| Secondly, I think one of the things that's difficult about this conversation is that it's a very complicated one. | ||
| So using the National Guard is not active military, right? | ||
| National Guard falls under Title 32. | ||
| Federal troops fall under Title 10. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There is a big difference between how you utilize them and how they're discussed, mobilized, utilized. | |
| What I think this president has done, again, if you go look at their court filings, defending federal agents and assets in buildings, right, and saying we're using these troops to do that is very different than just sending them into Washington, D.C. here where the president constitutionally has a much greater constitutional authority to do so. | ||
| So it's a much more complicated situation, I think, than people give it credit for. | ||
| But so far, I actually think it's a smart move. | ||
| Going in and fighting for people's safety and the alleviation of crime is a smart move. | ||
| And, of course, regardless, it's going to get caught up in the courts. | ||
| Faz, very quickly, because we're running out of time. | ||
| Do you think there's an opportunity politically for Democrats here, especially folks like J.P. Pritzker and Gavin Newsom? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| So firstly, the National Guard should be deployed democratically, such that you talk to the governor and you talk to the mayor and you solicit their negotiation and agreement that the National Guard is going to come into those cities for the purposes that presumably want to protect safety and obviously understand that is there a serious safety concern? | ||
| What is it? | ||
| How best to address it? | ||
| And in my view, I hope that the Democratic overreaction shouldn't be that we don't want to solve for safety. | ||
| This, in my view, is a tremendous trolling operation by the president. | ||
| He likes the discussion of public safety. | ||
| He wants to show that I'm a man of action in the arena deploying people and doing things. | ||
| I see that. | ||
| And yet he is, I think, in my view, overreacting both with ICE and the National Guard and over-deploying, over-aggressive. | ||
| So the Democratic reaction has to be, and what has been a challenge for them, is to acknowledge that there is a challenge. | ||
| That if there is homelessness in a city, if there is a public safety concern, that you are seriously focused on trying to resolve this in an honest and sincere way. | ||
| Too often, I think, we've gotten on the tracks where it doesn't seem, but there's only one party interested in solving and they want to overreact to it. | ||
| Immigration, you know, for a long time Democrats had not even talked about it being a serious issue. | ||
| It opened up the political window for over-deployment of ICE and the US. | ||
| Gentlemen, we are running out of time here. | ||
| Before I let you go, I want to uh introduce you to a new segment here on Ceasefire, called not on my bingo card where we highlight some moments that are uh unexpected, a little quirky, a little weird, as as our politics tend to be these days. | ||
| So this week, during attorney general Pam Bondi's testimony, things took a bit of a weird turn. | ||
| You may have seen this in an interaction between Republican senators Ted Cruz and John Kennedy. | ||
| Take a listen, i'll point out, senator Kennedy has a new book about testing negative for stupid, so I hope I test negative for stupid. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I hope I meet the the threshold of you do meet it. | |
| And I talk in the book about the tattoo of the Backstreet BOYS on your back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look, I can't help that. | |
| You don't want to reach young people. | ||
| I think young people are the future. | ||
| Damn it, and i'll do whatever steps. | ||
| Backstreet BOYS that would be on vice president Vance's playlist. | ||
| I heard that got hacked. | ||
| All right uh, Backstreet BOYS tattoos, playlists why don't we do this? | ||
| Those guys should just stick to legislation, and I mean, that's not even a good dad joke. | ||
| I gotta be honest with you. | ||
| Save the tattoos. | ||
| Yeah, there's certain things that you don't need to. | ||
| You know to get into that's. | ||
| You don't want to hear about body parts no, but just, I mean again, stick to the legislation and the hearing at, and not. | ||
| I wonder if uh, the Backstreet BOYS got a boost there. | ||
| I don't think they wanted, I don't know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not, not in that way. | |
| That's not the pr they were looking for. | ||
| All right, Sean Spicer, Fashuck here. | ||
| Thank you so much for joining us. | ||
| Congrats, and we'll close this week's program with our ceasefire moment of the week, highlighting what's possible when politicians come together as Americans, not just partisans. | ||
| Two Virginia candidates recently showed up to an early voting location at the same time. | ||
| Here's Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, John Reed, greeting Democratic candidate for governor, Abigail Spanberger, at a polling site in Henrico County, despite some booze from the crowd. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, let me do that too. | |
| Let me head it out. | ||
| I gotta get a fair fact. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But you're working hard. | |
| I appreciate it. | ||
| John Reed has put his name on the ballot. | ||
| I hate, I hate to be the one telling you this. | ||
| I did not go for you today and I return it, but that's okay. | ||
| But i'd like to demonstrate that we can still be friends. | ||
| You live in Henrico. | ||
| I live in Henrico. | ||
| I'm glad to see you always, so we're too busy for coffee anytime soon, my friend Probably. | ||
| True, all right ah, look at that. | ||
| Republicans and Democrats coming together the type of moments we love to showcase here. | ||
| On ceasefire. | ||
| We also have a special behind the scenes treat for you all. | ||
| Pence and Emmanuel met each other in the green room where the former vice president tried to make good on his bet with Rom. | ||
| Emmanuel's son tried to give him a $10 bill, though I think he owes him a bit more now, given the interest Emmanuel didn't want to take. | ||
| It said, no thanks, you got to give it to my son, so maybe we need to have their kids here next time. | ||
| That's all the time we have for this episode of C-SPAN's ceasefire. | ||
| Join us next time as I sit down with Oklahoma Republican governor Kevin Stitt and Maryland Democratic governor Wes Moore. | ||
| And a reminder, ceasefire is also available as a podcast. | ||
| Find us in all the usual places. | ||
| I'm Dasha Burns. | ||
| a great week. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Friday on C-SPAN's Ceasefire. | |
| Maryland Democratic Governor Wes Moore and Oklahoma Republican Governor Kevin Stitt sit down together with host Dasha Burns. | ||
| Ceasefire Friday at 7 p.m. Eastern and Pacific only on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| We're funded by these television companies and more, including Comcast. | ||
| The flag replacement program got started by a good friend of mine, a Navy vet, who saw the flag at the office that needed to be replaced. | ||
| He said, wouldn't this be great if this is going to be something that we did for anyone? | ||
| Comcast has always been a community-driven company. | ||
| This is one of those great examples of the way we're getting out there. | ||
| Comcast supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy. | ||
| I'll look now at American freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and religious freedom under the First Amendment, ways those rights can be tied together, and how the American public can have civil political discourse. | ||
| Welcome, welcome. | ||
| It is so amazing to be here today with our friends at AEI, and welcome to Faith in Laws Friday Forum. | ||
| Usually, we would be, we should be today in the Senate Heart office building, but they have a few things going on. |