| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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On their unexpected friendship and found common ground on one of the world's most pressing issues, Israel and Hamas. | |
| And I have no problem saying it. | ||
| President Trump deserves credit here. | ||
| Tell me why I probably won't say that. | ||
| I'm grateful for Ron speaking plainly about giving President Trump credit here. | ||
|
unidentified
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Friday, governors from opposite ends of the political map come together from Deep Red Oklahoma to Solid Blue Maryland. | |
| Democratic Governor Wes Moore and Republican Governor Kevin Stitt sit down with host Dasha Burns. | ||
| Welcome to Ceasefire, where we seek to bridge the divide in American politics. | ||
| For a conversation, not a confrontation. | ||
| Red meets blue. | ||
| Great Plains meets Mid-Atlantic Friday, October 17th at 7 p.m. Eastern and Pacific. | ||
| ceasefire only on c-span america marks 250 years and c-span is there to commemorate every moment | ||
| From the signing of the Declaration of Independence to the voices shaping our nation's future, we bring you unprecedented all-platform coverage, exploring the stories, sights, and spirit that make up America. | ||
| Join us for remarkable coast-to-coast coverage, celebrating our nation's journey like no other network can. | ||
| America 250. | ||
| Over a year of historic moments, only on the C-SPAN networks. | ||
| This is Elise Labbitt joining us of the Cosmopolitics Substack, which looks at foreign policy. | ||
| She serves as the founder and global affairs journalist, also an adjunct professor at American University, the School of International Service. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good to be with you. | |
| Last 24 hours in Gaza. | ||
| How do we get here? | ||
|
unidentified
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Wow. | |
| Well, I think, you know, it started two years ago. | ||
| We just came up on the two-year anniversary, and there have been fits and starts trying to achieve a ceasefire. | ||
| I think President Biden tried a few times, wasn't really able to, you know, keep it holding. | ||
| I think what President Trump did was really two things. | ||
| Take advantage of his relationships in the region, whether it's Gulf states, whether his really good relationship with Prime Minister Netanyahu, but also this new kind of security battlefield you have that over the last couple of years, | ||
| Israel has really decimated, I won't say defeated, all of Iran's proxies in the region, whether it's Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and even that strike with Iran, with the United States on Iran's nuclear program. | ||
| I think all of that gave way for President Trump to really push the Israelis to take a ceasefire in ways that haven't been possible before. | ||
| And Hamas was facing a lot of political disaffection on the ground there. | ||
| They're running out of weapons. | ||
| And those hostages, those poor hostages, were becoming more of a liability, I think, than really a leverage point. | ||
| You had written in the lead up to what we saw yesterday that the president had to be flattered into engagement. | ||
| Can you elaborate on that? | ||
|
unidentified
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President Trump, only you can do this. | |
| You're the only one that could make it happen. | ||
| And it turns out that, you know, it is true that I think President Trump's, let's call it unique, untraditional way of diplomacy, of leveraging those relationships, was really able to push it through. | ||
| But, you know, President Trump does fancy himself as a deal maker, as a statesman and a diplomat. | ||
| And I think coaxing him, and he had this meeting at the United Nations with dozens of leaders in the region. | ||
| And he called it the most important meeting he ever had. | ||
| So I think, you know, not just flattery, but really telling him that he's the only one that can do it. | ||
| And we know he really loves to hear that and fancies himself that way. | ||
| Is there a sense of the unconventional way that the president goes about a lot of things that apply to what we see now as far as the end result of the Gaza peace deal? | ||
|
unidentified
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I think one of the things about President Trump is he does not, you know, for better or worse, people like it, people hate it, but he doesn't follow, you know, the traditional, in this case, diplomatic playbook. | |
| So he can press Israel and also say, I'm pro-Israel. | ||
| He can walk away from the table. | ||
| He doesn't mind using, you know, the leverages of American prestige and power. | ||
| I think one of the criticisms of President Biden not being able to get this deal done was that he wasn't really willing to push Netanyahu with ways that was really ready to use American power. | ||
| And I think President Trump not only said to Netanyahu, I'm willing to make you look good, but I'm also willing to make you look bad. | ||
| And I think he understood that if Netanyahu had his back against the corner, that he was going to do this. | ||
| And that's exactly what he did. | ||
| Callers, if you want to ask questions about the events in Gaza the last 24 hours, 2027 for eight eight thousand, one for Republicans, Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| Independents, 202748-8002. | ||
| And you can talk with Elise Labbitt of the Cosmopolitics Substack. | ||
| What is that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Cosmopolitics is a newsletter on foreign policy. | |
| I like to say it's the insider's guide to your world and the people that run it. | ||
| I was a correspondent at CNN with your CEO, Sam Feis, covering the State Department for about 20 years. | ||
| So I covered seven secretaries of state, several administrations from President Clinton to Bush to Obama and now Trump and Biden. | ||
| And so I feel like I really try to bring not just the global affairs, but how it affects domestic politics and all the people involved. | ||
| So you've probably seen this idea of peace happen a lot over the years. | ||
|
unidentified
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I was at Camp David in 2000. | |
| And I think that's really the closest in my, you know, that they've ever gotten. | ||
| And I think largely the peace plan that President Clinton put forward, he put it forward right before he left at Taba. | ||
| That's really the peace plan that is still on the table. | ||
| That's really the only, you know, the parameters of the land might change. | ||
| But I think that whether there is going to be this vaulted two-state solution is very unclear. | ||
| President Trump's plan makes a vague mention of it, a pathway to a Palestinian state, but a lot has to happen, and we'll talk about that. | ||
| But, you know, most experts, most diplomats and former diplomats say a two-state solution where Palestinians are living in a separate state than Israel is really the only way to bring peace and security to the region. | ||
| The president alluded to that on the way back from Egypt yesterday, show you a little bit of what he had to say and get your response to it. | ||
|
unidentified
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You said that everybody is unified over your plan, but we heard from President Sisi calling for a two-state solution, an independent Palestinian state. | |
| I'm talking about something very much different. | ||
| We're talking about rebuilding Gaza. | ||
| I'm not talking about single state or double state or two state. | ||
|
unidentified
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We're talking about the rebuilding of Gaza. | |
| What's the road ahead for governing Gaza? | ||
| A lot of people like the one-state solution. | ||
| Some people like the two-state solutions. | ||
| We'll have to see. | ||
| I haven't commented on that. | ||
|
unidentified
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How do you see bridging that gap? | |
| Because you have the Arab countries being very clear. | ||
| I think it is right, but I'd be in coordination with other states and other countries. | ||
| So he alluded to it and other things when it comes to the plan itself, what do you take away from that? | ||
|
unidentified
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I take away that President Trump is the first president in modern history, well, since this conflict has been going on, to not talk about a two, to not really say that the U.S. is for a two-state solution. | |
| And the U.S. is the only state that doesn't really think that. | ||
| There might be one or two small states that don't. | ||
| But if you look at what happened at the United Nations last month, Pedro, you know, close to 200 states have endorsed, if not recognized, a Palestinian state, which I think is really symbolic and doesn't really mean much, but the idea of a Palestinian state. | ||
| And that's, you know, a lot has to happen before that. | ||
| And when he talks about rebuilding Gaza, that's really the main thing. | ||
| But when we talk about rebuilding Gaza, it's not just about the reconstruction and the reconstruction. | ||
| You see those pictures. | ||
| It's monumental. | ||
| It's the project of decades, but it's about governance, too. | ||
| Because Palestinians don't have good governance, whether it's in Gaza. | ||
| We saw that Hamas already started to reassert control over Gaza and start killing its rivals. | ||
| But in the West Bank, too, the Palestinian Authority is not seen as a real legitimate government. | ||
| There needs to be elections. | ||
| The international community is really going to have to help the Palestinians build governance. | ||
| And that's a major part of the plan, too. | ||
| So all that, I think, really needs to happen before they talk about a Palestinian state. | ||
| We have some calls lined up for you. | ||
| We'll hear from Mark. | ||
| Mark joins us on our line for Democrats from Maryland with Elise Labbitt of Cosmopolitics. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hi, Mark. | |
| I guess hi, can you hear me? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So my question is: you know, it seems like there is a lot of just hoopla and just kind of like the scene of Israel kind of coming away the winner and maybe both sides needing to come away as the winner. | ||
| But it also seems like this could have ended a lot sooner had the U.S. just not send as much armaments. | ||
| You know, like why wasn't more steps taken to end the war sooner just by not sending armaments to Israel? | ||
| Well, that's the question that a lot of people ask, Mark. | ||
| But the thing is, the arms that the U.S. sends Israel aren't necessarily for the Palestinians, and that's a major problem. | ||
| There are export controls that really govern the use of these weapons. | ||
| It's also for Iran. | ||
| And for many years, Israel has been in this neighborhood where you have all these Iranian proxies that are hitting Israel. | ||
| There could have been more of a conditional aid. | ||
| And I think President Biden tried it for a minute and said, I'm not going to send some major bombs and then ended up sending them. | ||
| Some lawmakers on the Democratic side did try to pass a resolution that conditioned U.S. aid to Israel. | ||
| They never did that. | ||
| If you notice, President Trump did not do that. | ||
| I think he used a lot more political muscle in this sense, but also helping Israel militarily against Iran to make it feel stronger in the region. | ||
| And I think Hamas has been defeated to the point where even the Israeli military said, you know, we're not really getting our bang from the buck by continuing this war. | ||
| So that is a question that a lot of people have asked. | ||
| A lot of things in President Trump's plan were on the table under President Biden. | ||
| The truth of the matter is that Prime Minister Netanyahu did not want to make a deal with President Biden. | ||
| He did not respect him. | ||
| I mean, he respected him as a U.S. leader, but he thought he would get a better deal with President Trump, I think. | ||
| From Guy. | ||
| Guy is in Oklahoma, line for independence. | ||
| Hello, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Guy. | |
| Hey, good morning, Paige. | ||
| You look very sharp as usual. | ||
| Elise, thank you for coming on the show today. | ||
| I have a couple of things I want to throw out there, and it's going to sound crazy. | ||
| The first thing I want to say is Trump fulfilled a prophecy in 2017 when he moved the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. | ||
| And he also did something the news never talked about. | ||
| It was called the Trump-Jerusalem Declaration, where he officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. | ||
| And biblical prophecy says that for Christ to come back, Jerusalem has to be the capital. | ||
| And, you know, going back to the New Testament, Jerusalem is mentioned 699 times in the New Testament more than any other word. | ||
| It's the focal point of the Bible. | ||
| Anyway, so he fulfilled the prophecy by making Jerusalem the capital in 2017. | ||
| Now, the current prophecy that we've been watching recently goes back to Zepaniah, a prophet, not Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist, but Zepaniah 3,000 years ago. | ||
| And in the Old Testament, there's drawings, there's illustrations and pictures. | ||
| And Zepania drew a map of the current modern-day Middle East. | ||
| And remember, back when he drew it, it was Persia ruled under King Cyrus. | ||
| There was no Jordan, Egypt, Israel, nothing. | ||
| And he drew a map back then with all the current-day countries. | ||
| And it even had the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and Gaza. | ||
| And his prophecy was that the Philistines, the current modern-day Palestinians, would flee Gaza and Judah would take over. | ||
| Okay, so I don't know about the actual Bible part, but I will say, Guy, that I was in Jerusalem in 2017 or 18 when they moved, forgive me for not remembering the year, but when President Trump moved the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and declared Jerusalem the capital, this is something that no, every president in history promised to do it. | ||
| President Trump is the one who did it. | ||
| And then, you know, when I was there, there were all these signs, Zion for Trump, right? | ||
| And when you talk about Zionists, that's a very, that's a whole nother show. | ||
| But Zionists for Trump is really evangelicals for Trump. | ||
| And that's why I think a lot, there's a long history of evangelical support for Israel because of the Jews know, because of, you know, they're waiting for the rapture and for, you know, this whole idea that Christ would be reborn in Jerusalem. | ||
| And so it's not crazy. | ||
| I don't know if it's actually related. | ||
| However, that's the real connection. | ||
| And Trump did recognize Jerusalem as the capital. | ||
| He gave the Golan Heights to Israel in his mind, declared that that was Israeli. | ||
| And so I think that's one of the reasons that President Trump has so much legitimacy in Israel and especially with Prime Minister Netanyahu to be able to get this deal done. | ||
| How's that? | ||
| Some of the elements of the plan, the first one requiring Gaza to be initially governed by a temporary committee of technocrats. | ||
| It also calls for Hamas and allied factions to give up role in governing Gaza, a temporary international stabilization force organized by the United States. | ||
| There's a lot there. | ||
| Going to be the hardest one to hurdle. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, I think all of the pageantry of the last couple of days and what was going on yesterday really belied the fact that a lot still needs to be worked out. | |
| And President, it's in President Trump's plan, as you said. | ||
| He made kind of mention of those bullet points, but none of that has been worked out. | ||
| There's no detail on that yet. | ||
| And there's this committee of peace, who knows who's going to be on it. | ||
| President Trump is chairing it. | ||
| But, you know, that governance, who's going to run Gaza? | ||
| How is Hamas ready to disarm? | ||
| Who's going to disarm them? | ||
| What countries are sending troops? | ||
| All of this needs to be worked out. | ||
| And then, again, this whole idea of who is going to run Gaza is key because otherwise a lot of it falls apart. | ||
| You really need that, you know, the Israelis, for better or worse, are the stronger power. | ||
| They don't have to really do anything except move back their troops, allow Aiden. | ||
| The Palestinians have a much larger project ahead of them, and that's really going to take the international community to help them. | ||
| And I will say, one of the concerns I think, and especially hearing President Trump declare that the war is over, the war is not over. | ||
| This was phase one. | ||
| The Israelis see it as a hostage exchange. | ||
| Those were Palestinian prisoners. | ||
| I won't say all of them committed crimes against Israel, but a lot of them were in jail committed for at least, you know, 250 of them were serving life sentences. | ||
| So these are, this was an exchange of prisoners for hostages. | ||
| And as far as Israel is concerned, that's the price they had to pay to get their hostages back. | ||
| You haven't seen anyone in Israel say the war is over, we're done fighting, we're not going after Hamas anymore. | ||
| So so much of that, and that stabilization force to disarm Hamas and secure Gaza is going to be really important. | ||
| What's the likelihood that the president stays as engaged in these after effects than the lead-up of what we saw? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that's not his strong suit. | |
| And he's already kind of declared the war is over, and he said that it's going to hold. | ||
| And I'm going back and I'm going to meet with President Zelensky this week. | ||
| So, you know, he wants to keep going on other things. | ||
| That's the real problem. | ||
| And I'll go back to the first question that you asked me about the flattery. | ||
| That's what the international community is going to have to do with President Trump: really continue to coax him into only you can do this, only you can do this. | ||
| If he's not willing to put pressure on the Israelis to live up to their side of the deal and to push the international community to commit resources, troops, mentoring, training, it could all fall apart. | ||
| It's very shaky. | ||
| At least Labbitt joining us for this conversation. | ||
| Let's hear from John. | ||
| John joins us from New York and Syracuse. | ||
| This is on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, John. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| So I don't understand why Trump is over there. | ||
| He ran as the America first president. | ||
| We have an economy that's not doing well. | ||
| We have a government shutdown. | ||
| We have floods and no flood insurance program. | ||
| Christopher Hitchens, who you had on C-SPEN many different times, talked about a lot of these issues and the role that Israel and religion influences the United States. | ||
| I don't understand this. | ||
| For 100,000 years, human beings have roamed the earth. | ||
| Jesus has been around for 2,000 years. | ||
| Israel goes back 5,000 years, perhaps. | ||
| And for 97,000 years, there was no concern of religion. | ||
| Now, all of a sudden, after 97,000 years, this country gets formed and everybody revolves around Israel. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Our economy is bad. | ||
| We have a government shutdown. | ||
| Why is an America first president over there when all this other stuff is happening here? | ||
| Makes no sense. | ||
| This Israel obsession is bad for America. | ||
| John in New York. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, that's a question a lot of people ask: what is this tie that Israel and the U.S. have? | |
| Some people say it's, you know, the donors, AIPAC. | ||
| Some people say it's the Jewish vote. | ||
| Some people say it's this evangelical tie, similar values and interests. | ||
| I don't really know what that tie is, but I will say a lot of people have said, why is President Trump doing this? | ||
| I think he sees, and you know, there have been other presidents, President Biden said, I'm a Zionist. | ||
| I think President Trump is very, as we've said, transactional. | ||
| If you remember his first trip to the region, he sees the Gulf states and the U.S. position in the region with the Arabs as integral to the U.S. investment, to creating money, jobs, those type of things. | ||
| And I think that he also fancies himself as a deal maker and peacemaker and wants the Nobel Peace Prize. | ||
| That's a side. | ||
| But when you try to tie it to what's going on here at home, I think he sees solving this and his peace plan for the region, which is Israel's normalization. | ||
| I think he feels like the U.S. is going to really capitalize on that. | ||
| And I will say, there's a huge reconstruction plan that's going to be going on in Gaza. | ||
| I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of U.S. companies, and there was that video, which was kind of a farce about, you know, the Riviera of the Middle East. | ||
| But when you talk about rebuilding Gaza, you can rest assured Jared Kushner was over there in the region with his deal making. | ||
| Those countries are investing in Jared Kushner's fund. | ||
| They're also going to be investing in Gaza. | ||
| And I think that's what that's about. | ||
| And that all depends on sustained security there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
100%. | |
| Let's hear Mary. | ||
| Mary is in Texas Democrats' line. | ||
| Hi, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| They didn't ever get all of the hostages back. | ||
| They only got 20. | ||
| How many more did they got left over there that they hadn't got? | ||
| How is the war over and all the hostages are not back? | ||
| Trump is not doing anything but trying to use a mind game. | ||
| And those people are much smarter than he thinks he is, than he thinks they are. | ||
| Because if you don't have all the hostages back and Israel haven't put down their weapons, our moms haven't put down their weapons, we're still in that war. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Okay, so there were 20 hostages that were alive, and all living hostages, Mary, are back. | ||
| It is true there are 20, I think, 28 deceased hostages. | ||
| Hamas has only given back two or four, four bodies, and they've identified two this morning. | ||
| This is a problem. | ||
| They promised that they would give back all those bodies. | ||
| I think that part of the problem is that Hamas doesn't know where they are, that there are other groups, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist and militia groups on the ground that have some of those hostages, and they're trying to find their remains. | ||
| Now, this could be that Israel says, if they don't want to abide by this agreement now that the hostages are home, and that's an open question, they could say, well, this is a, you know, you already hear the foreign minister and the defense minister say this is a violation. | ||
| So it is true that they don't have all the hostages. | ||
| They have all the living hostages. | ||
| How did Qatar factor into all this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is really the cutter, was really the wildcard here. | |
| Okay, so this relationship between the U.S. and President, between Qatar and President Trump has really been growing. | ||
| And you remember when he went out there to the region, they gave him this plane, this new Air Force one. | ||
| So that relationship has been building. | ||
| They have a very big air base, which is very important in the region. | ||
| But what really happened was this is where Hamas's political leadership lives. | ||
| They also had this similar role with the Taliban, if you remember, that the Taliban leadership was there. | ||
| And they fancy themselves as these like troubled spots mediator. | ||
| And this was at the request of both the United States and Israel over the years that Hamas leadership, they would be there as a kind of a mediator to be able to pass messages and such. | ||
| What happened was Israel went after the political leadership, tried to assassinate them in Qatar. | ||
| This was the first time that they didn't go after Iran or a terrorist state or a terrorist organization in one of Iran's proxies. | ||
| They went after Hamas in the nation of a U.S. ally. | ||
| And no one really knows if President Trump knew about it before. | ||
| He says he didn't, but a lot of people are skeptical. | ||
| However, he was furious and used it to his advantage to be able to say to Israel, the Arabs were furious. | ||
| They were all worried that Israel is, you know, it's not Iran that's the big threat anymore in the region. | ||
| Israel is the threat. | ||
| They're coming after us next. | ||
| And that was a real moment, I think. | ||
| President Trump, in a meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu, had him call the emir of Qatar and apologize. | ||
| And I think that was really one of the cogs in the wheel that was able to get massaged for them to make the deal. | ||
| So Qatar was really important here. | ||
| A sidebar question then. | ||
| We just heard this week that there's going to be land for a Qatari Air Force facility in Idaho, granted by the president. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This relationship is going to continue to build. | |
| Qatar is a problematic country. | ||
| They do make a lot of investments around the United States, even here in Washington, as you know. | ||
| However, they do support the Muslim Brotherhood, which is Hamas's kind of parent organization, an Islamic political and terrorist organization. | ||
| And if you remember, a couple of years ago, there was this blockade by the Gulf states because they felt that they were supporting terrorist groups. | ||
| So it's a very controversial country. | ||
| They have gotten back into the relationship with the Arabs with all of this going on. | ||
| But it's a fascinating relationship that continues to build under President Trump. | ||
| I will say, whether it's Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff, his son, there are a lot of private businesses going on between the Trump ecosystem and people in Qatar. | ||
| One more call. | ||
| This will be from Sonia. | ||
| Sonia's in D.C., Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Hi, can you hear me? | ||
| You're on. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Going back to what you said about the international community, my first question is why over the last two years, why haven't countries like Turkey, Morocco, Egypt, nobody said, you know, hey, Gaza, we'll shelter your kids, your pregnant women. | |
| It's surprising to me that these big Muslim nations extended no help to the Palestinians. | ||
| And to this day, I'm sure you know the border between Egypt that Egypt built, between them and Gaza, is eight kilometers wide. | ||
| And closed. | ||
| Why don't Muslim nations want Palestinians? | ||
| That's a really complicated question, Sonia, but I'll take a stab at it. | ||
| First of all, everyone says that they care about the Palestinians, and these countries have used the Palestinian cause over, you know, decades, whether it's to not to rule their people, you know, heavy-handedly or to go against Israel. | ||
| So there's that, that the Palestinians are really the stepchild of the region. | ||
| Countries like Jordan and Lebanon have taken on a lot of refugees. | ||
| However, the Palestinians, by and large, don't want to leave. | ||
| And so even if some do want to leave, there's this perception that by taking them in, you're kind of endorsing their displacement and what was originally called the NACBA, and that they're afraid that they won't be able to come back. | ||
| And so particularly Egypt has been really adamant that we're not taking them because you're never going to take them back. | ||
| And this is your way of emptying Gaza of the Palestinians. | ||
| And so it's been, you know, it's an excuse, it's political, but it's a very complicated and legitimate question because these people have really been suffering. | ||
| But, you know, even now they're going home. | ||
| And you had a caller in the first half hour say, why would anybody want to live there now? | ||
| You know, just like Israel is tied to their land, to the Palestinians, this is their land. | ||
| And even if it's a rubble, it's their land. | ||
| And that's why, you know, they're living in such squalor, but they still consider themselves this land. | ||
| And that's why they continue to fight for that two-state solution. | ||
| How can people find your substack? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's at cosmopolitics.news. | |
| You can find it on Substack or just cosmopolitics.news. | ||
| We do interviews. | ||
| We do live. | ||
| We do a weekly roundup on Thursday afternoons with a friend of mine who is actually, I'm more in the center and kind of a journalist, but she's very conservative and we kind of debate the issues. | ||
| So Substack has a lot of wonderful writers and things like that. | ||
| And I've really been enjoying it. | ||
| Elise Labbitt is the founder of it and the global affairs journalist for Cosmopolitics. | ||
| Thanks for your time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks so much. | |
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy. | ||
| From Washington and across the country. | ||
| Coming up Wednesday morning, we'll talk about the government shutdown. | ||
| First with federal news networks Jory Heckman, who will focus on the impact on the federal workforce, including the Trump administration's reduction in force. | ||
| Then with Mike Brest of the Washington Examiner, looking at the shutdown's impact on military pay and Pentagon operations. | ||
| And later, the effects of the shutdown on defense and national security. | ||
| Virginia Republican Congressman Rob Whitman will be our guest. | ||
| Also, first-term Virginia Democratic Congressman James Walkinshaw on the Democrats' strategies in dealing with the shutdown. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal. | ||
| Join in the conversation live at 7 Eastern Wednesday morning on C-SPAN. | ||
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| President Trump announced that the U.S. has struck another alleged drug smuggling boat off the coast of Venezuela, posting this. | ||
| Under my standing authorities as commander-in-chief, this morning, the Secretary of War ordered a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with a designated terrorist organization conducting narco-trafficking in the U.S. Southcom area of responsibility, just off the coast of Venezuela. | ||
| Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics, was associated with illicit narco-terrorist networks, and was transiting along a known DTO route. | ||
| The strike was conducted in international waters, and six male narco-terrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike. | ||
| No U.S. forces were harmed. |