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 Rah 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 our 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?
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 appreciated about Rahm is while we differed, particularly after he led the charge for the Democrats to defeat the Republican majority in 2006, I always thought he got over it.
I would tell you, I will say this about Rah, 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.
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.
I heard today on my way over the National Defense Authorization Act that's 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.
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, Mike.
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.
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.
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 Netanyahu, the leadership of Hamas, would have done this if it wasn't also pressure from the Israeli public or the Palestinians in Gaza's spirit.
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 have 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 Bibi Netanyahu to apply pressure on Putin, who is 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?
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 Kafaraza.
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 turning Gaza over to what would become the clause of Hamas and literally bulldoze 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.
So 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 it 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.
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.
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 or 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.
Frankly, when the Taliban broke the deal in the Biden administration and they moved on Masr al-Sharif in the north and we continued the withdrawal, to me that was a catastrophic era 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.
And I know 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.
Because it's not being perceived as a Democratic force shutdown.
It's being perceived, as 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.
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.
I think they could make the case much more effectively.
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.
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 try 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 to the 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 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 ours can agree.
I'll bet you that 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.
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.
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 woulda, coulda, shoulda, 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.
At the end of the day, and I don't think I've served 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.
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.
One, what the Republican Party is missing is 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 it 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.
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.
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.
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.
Now, 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.
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.
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?
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.
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's been decimated.
Education system, electricity system, UNEV hospitals, all decimated.
So there's got to be a rebuilding of society.
And, you know, 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.
Castellmate 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.
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.
We could have come to him and said, I 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 the 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.
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 permanently.
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 a 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 because they made them permanent from the beginning, which they did.
So back in 2013, and 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.
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 leave.
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.
unidentified
So I really think the pressure is on the president.
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.
unidentified
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.
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.
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.
He's, 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.
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.
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, 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 Thune 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.
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 could 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.
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?
unidentified
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.
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.
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 Rahm Emanuel 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?
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 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.
unidentified
Secondly, I think one of the things that's difficult about this conversation is that it's a very complicated one.
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.
And of course, regardless, it's going to get caught up in the courts 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, over-reacting 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 in the US.
All right, gentlemen, we are running out of time here.
Before I let you go, I want to introduce you to a new segment here on Ceasefire called Not On My Bingo Card, where we highlight some moments that are unexpected, a little quirky, a little weird 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.
unidentified
I'll point out Senator Kennedy has a new book about testing negative for stupid, so I hope I test negative for stupid.
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, but you're working hard.
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 Rahm 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 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.
Have a great week.
unidentified
Why are you doing this?
This is outrageous.
This is a kangaroo club.
Fridays, C-SPAN presents a rare moment of unity.
Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins.
Politico Playbook chief correspondent and White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns is host of Ceasefire, bringing two leaders from opposite sides of the island to a dialogue.
Ceasefire on the network that doesn't take sides.
at 7 and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
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Well, the previous ceasefire was essentially put in place just a few days before Trump came in.
Trump's people were instrumental in ensuring that that happened, and they put pressure on Netanyahu in order to get the Israelis to accept it.
But from the outset, the Israeli side said that they would not go to phase two because the phase two, the whole thing would actually lead to an end to the war.
And by March of this year, the Israelis violated that ceasefire and restarted the siege on Gaza, stopping the convoys of food getting in and started bombing again.
And the hope is, the calculation is that that will make it more difficult for Netanyahu or cabinet members of his, such as Motrich and others, to pull out of this agreement.
This has been part of the demand from the Arab side that Trump really needed to step into this deal much, much more strongly than he did in the previous one in order to raise the cost for any party to walk out of this deal.
Let's take a look at what the White House is saying is the President's plan for Gaza, and then I'll have you comment on it.
It says this: Gaza will be governed under the temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee responsible for delivering the day-to-day running of public services and municipalities of the people in Gaza.
A transitional governance of technocratic, apolitical.