| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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Who will also discuss the opposition to Trump administration policies? | |
| Then later with the Washington Times Cheryl Chumley on the federal shutdown, today's rally, and the news of the day. | ||
| And former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, John Herbst, discusses President Trump's meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the future of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. | ||
| Washington Journal starts now. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| It's Saturday, October 18th, and the 18th day of the government shutdown. | ||
| The Senate recessed until Monday, and the Speaker reiterated that he won't bring the House back to regular session until the government reopens. | ||
| President Trump met with Ukraine's leader, President Zelensky, in the Oval Office yesterday. | ||
| The No Kings protests against the Trump administration happened today around the country. | ||
| And John Bolton, former National Security Advisor, was indicted this week for mishandling classified documents. | ||
| He pleaded not guilty to the charges. | ||
| Those are a few of this week's stories. | ||
| What was your top news story? | ||
| Here's how to reach us. | ||
| Republicans, 202748-8001. | ||
| Democrats, 202748-8000. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can text us at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Include your first name in your city-state. | ||
| And we're on social media, facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and X at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Welcome to today's Washington Journal. | ||
| One more news story for you that just happened last night, and that's this from NBC. | ||
| Trump commutes former Representative George Santos' prison sentence. | ||
| It says this, that President Donald Trump said Friday that he had signed a commutation that would immediately release former Representative George Santos, the Republican of New York, from prison. | ||
| This is what he said on Truth Social yesterday evening, quote, George has been in solitary confinement for long stretches of time and by all accounts has been horribly mistreated. | ||
| Therefore, I just signed a commutation releasing George Santos from prison, all caps, immediately. | ||
| Good luck, George. | ||
| Have a great life. | ||
| In April, Santos was sentenced to more than seven years in prison. | ||
| Last year, he pleaded guilty to charges of committing wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. | ||
| Conduct that prosecutors said was part of a years-long scheme that preyed upon the campaign finance system and his own political party, donors, and family members to line his own pockets. | ||
| He was released around 11 p.m. last night. | ||
| You'd like to comment on that? | ||
| You can. | ||
| You can give us a call, let us know. | ||
| But also what happened yesterday was President Trump and President Zelensky met at the White House. | ||
| They spoke with reporters. | ||
| Here is a portion of that talking about Tomahawk missiles. | ||
| If you okay Tomahawks to Ukraine. | ||
| What's going to happen if the United States is in a conflict and we need the tomahawks? | ||
| That's the problem. | ||
| We need tomahawks and we need a lot of other things that we've been sending over the last four years to Ukraine. | ||
| We've been, you know, we gave them a lot. | ||
| Now we have a different situation. | ||
| We send it to the European Union. | ||
| They pay for it and all that. | ||
| And they have plenty of money. | ||
| But it's beyond the money. | ||
| You know, we need tomahawks or we need a lot of other weapons that we're sending to Ukraine. | ||
| One of the reasons we want to get this war over is exactly that. | ||
| It's not easy for us to give you talking about massive numbers of very powerful weapons. | ||
| So that's one of the things we'll be talking about. | ||
| Hopefully they won't need it. | ||
| Hopefully we'll be able to get the war over with without thinking about tomahawks. | ||
| I think we're fairly close to that. | ||
| Just to understand. | ||
| So for today, of course we want to finish this war, but the war is another technological war. | ||
| You don't use just tomahawks. | ||
| If you want to target a military goal, you need thousands of drones. | ||
| It goes together with such missiles. | ||
| Ukraine has such thousands of our production drones, but we don't have tomahawks. | ||
| That's why we need tomahawks. | ||
| But the United States is a very strong production, and the United States has tomahawks and other missiles, very strong missiles. | ||
| But they can have our thousands of drones. | ||
| That's why we can work together, where we can strengthen American production. | ||
| And so, just so that I understand, so you're suggesting kind of a trade. | ||
| If President Trump okays tomahawk missiles to help you launch military goals, then it's only about military goals. | ||
| Right, but then you would authorize some kind of an exchange where U.S. proposition. | ||
| We have brief proposition with our drones. | ||
| That was yesterday in the Oval Office, and this is what Axios reports about that. | ||
| It says Trump rejects Zelensky on tomahawk missiles in, quote, tough meeting. | ||
| It says that the president told Zelensky in a tense meeting yesterday that he doesn't intend to provide long-range tomahawk missiles, at least for now. | ||
| Zelensky hoped to leave Washington with commitments around new weapons for Ukraine, but found Trump in a totally different state of mind. | ||
| A day after he had a lengthy call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, reports are that it was about two hours long, that phone call. | ||
| It says Trump made clear his priority now is diplomacy, and he thinks providing tomahawks could undermine it. | ||
| It says this Trump hinted at that stance. | ||
| Oh, it says he stressed the current U.S. proposal for a diplomatic solution is for the war to end with the front lines frozen in place, a difficult proposition for Ukraine to accept. | ||
| Trump hinted at that stance in a true social post following the meeting. | ||
| He described the meeting as interesting and cordial, and he said he'd told Zelensky and Putin it was time to, quote, stop where they are, adding, let both claim victory. | ||
| Let history decide. | ||
| He then departed for Mar-a-Lago without taking questions from the press. | ||
| Go to calls now. | ||
| We'll start with Scott, who is in Roseville, California, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Scott. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Paul. | |
| Go ahead. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| I imagine that PGT is going to kill us all. | ||
| Why do you think that, Scott? | ||
| Because the nuclear option is available to him. | ||
| He's going to kill us all. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And let's go to Paul, who's calling from England, Republican line. | ||
| Hi, Paul. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Maybe I'll wait today. | |
| All right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Again, that President Trump and Zelansky, hopefully moving a break at some point on Putin as well, Mr. Pardon Putin, at some point, they've got to do a negotiation to stop the war in Ukraine. | ||
| I'm sure they've got to be some sort of negotiation at some point in time. | ||
| I'm sure they will. | ||
| Do you think they will? | ||
| And Gary in Baltimore, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Gary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My top news story of this week and last week. | ||
| And I hope you can get someone, please, to come on and talk about this because we're not hearing anything from legacy media. | ||
| I'm sorry about what? | ||
| You actually, I didn't hear you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're not hearing anything about this on legacy media. | |
| About what? | ||
| I'm calling about it something called NSPM-7. | ||
| Please look it up. | ||
| Please bring someone on to talk about it. | ||
| It's extremely important. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Can you tell me what it's about? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's about NS. | |
| No, no, no, I know, but what is that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's National Security Presidential Memorandum-7. | |
| And what's in it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Seventh one. | |
| It's anti-terrorism, but it's always been external. | ||
| Now it's being directed internally at domestic terrorism and how they're defining it. | ||
| This all has to do with the Insurrection Act. | ||
| And who puts that out, Gary? | ||
| Is that from the intelligence community? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Who puts out that? | |
| President Trump, on, I think, the 25th of September, President Trump signed this memorandum. | ||
| Mostly it was developed by Stephen Miller. | ||
| Just look it up, NSPM-7, and you'll find out exactly what it's about. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| All right, Gary. | ||
| And let's get the latest on the government shutdown here. | ||
| Speaker Johnson yesterday blaming Democrats for prolonging that shutdown. | ||
| Well, good morning. | ||
| Welcome to day 17 of the Democrat shutdown. | ||
| I just, I feel like on a day like this at the end of another long week, I just feel like we ought to apologize. | ||
| I hate that we have to do this. | ||
| I don't want to be here any more than you do talking about this subject. | ||
| It is so difficult to be a happy warrior when you know that so many millions of American people are suffering, being made to suffer unnecessarily because of the Democrats' political games. | ||
| If you're keeping count at home, we're on day 17 of the shutdown. | ||
| The Democrats have now voted for the 11th time to keep the government closed, 11 times now. | ||
| They've refused to just do their basic job, get the government going again, making sure that federal employees are paid, that our troops are paid, border patrol agents, TSA agents, air traffic controllers, and everyone else who relies upon the vital services of our federal government. | ||
| They're being denied that because Democrats in Congress are playing games. | ||
| And right now, to add insult to injury, if you're paying attention at home, you also need to make note of this. | ||
| Yesterday, the Senate Democrats took it a step further. | ||
| They rejected a standalone bill to fund our nation's defense and pay our troops. | ||
| They voted it down. | ||
| Now, why is that so noteworthy? | ||
| Well, the bill was passed out of committee in the Senate with broad bipartisan support. | ||
| And yet, the Democrats still engaged in a stunt on the floor and they rejected it. | ||
| So now they are on record specifically and exclusively to block the paychecks of the troops, to block the funding of our national defense in a very dangerous moment in world history. | ||
| It is absurd to us. | ||
| Leader Thune said this on the floor, on the Senate floor after that vote. | ||
| He said, quote, that one vote demonstrates just how fundamentally disinterested Democrats are in supporting our troops and providing for our common defense. | ||
| Yes, that is exactly what we saw. | ||
| And I suspect if they were here today and it was on the floor, they'd do it once again. | ||
| That was Speaker Johnson yesterday. | ||
| And our topic this Saturday morning is your top news story of the week. | ||
| Anything that happened this week, what you want to talk about, what you thought was the most important thing that happened this week, give us a call. | ||
| The lines are open. | ||
| Republicans are on 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independence 202748-8002. | ||
| Regarding the caller from Baltimore, here is what we're found on that. | ||
| This is Time magazine with the headline, White House, Anti-Terror Order Targets, quote, anti-capitalist and anti-American views. | ||
| Here's what to know. | ||
| The Trump administration is facing mounting criticism over a sweeping directive that expands the government's definition of domestic terrorism, indicators to include a wide range of political beliefs, with lawmakers and civil liberties groups warning it could be used to criminalize dissent. | ||
| The order which directs the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force to investigate, quote, networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence, identifies ideological markers such as anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity as potential red flags. | ||
| Rights groups say that language is so broad, it risks sweeping in protest movements, advocacy organizations, and critics of the administration. | ||
| That's at Time magazine if you'd like more information. | ||
| Roderick in Canada, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| This is regarding the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and I'm hoping can be remembered for when John Herbs is on your show in a couple of hours. | ||
| Russia's demands and concerns since 2008 have almost exclusively been to have Ukraine remain a neutral country and to not become a member of NATO or the European Union. | ||
| If the United States would enforce Russia's demands, preventing Ukraine from joining NATO and the EU, this would not prevent the EU and the United States from providing funding to Ukraine and governance assistance to assist that country in improving its terrible problem with corruption, the rule of law, and its economy. | ||
| So, Roderick, let me ask you this about that. | ||
| They did not, as far as we know, in the Oval Office discuss Ukraine joining NATO. | ||
| What do you think of the United States providing security guarantees and what, and if you agree with that, what it should look like? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, my view is that there would be a security guarantee if Ukraine is publicly informed by the United States and preferably as well by EU leadership that it will never be allowed to become a member of the EU or NATO. | |
| There wouldn't be a security risk from Russia. | ||
| Russia has never had military intent towards Ukraine since the breakup of the Soviet Union. | ||
| And you trust Russia to respect their borders and respect them as an independent state. | ||
| You trust Putin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
My view is based upon the evidence of the last 30 years. | |
| Russia has never expressed a military intention of hostility towards Ukraine until there were attempts by the West to drag Ukraine into NATO and to have the EU effectively embrace Ukraine and drag it in as well. | ||
| The EU has a similar clause to NATO's clause that requires member states to come to the defense of any other member state if they are attacked. | ||
| Russia is concerned about military strike weapons being based inside Ukraine, 15 or 20 minutes flying time from Moscow. | ||
| If Ukraine had enough sense, its leadership to just say, okay, we agree we won't join NATO or the EU, but at the same time, the EU would be free to provide as much funding and governance on rule of law, improvement assistance. | ||
| I will ask Ambassador Herbs that later in the program. | ||
| And this is Lincoln in Clarksburg, Maryland, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I feel that the administration is no more than a clown show, and the GOP are the promoters. | ||
| I feel that the American people need to know that the system is set up that if the GOP do their job, they can stop him. | ||
| The GOP took an oath for the people, but I feel like they're only concerned about their personal jobs. | ||
| And they feel that Trump is such a threat that they don't, they forget that they took the oath for the people and not for Trump. | ||
| I feel if the American people understand how the system works, that if the GOP can stop everything that's going on, everything that's going on, but they won't because they're afraid of Donald Trump. | ||
| And that's sad. | ||
| I feel with the people, we need to vote the GOP out of office. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And this is Yolanda, a Republican in Nashville, Tennessee. | ||
| Hi, Yolanda. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Mimi. | |
| My name's Yolanda, and I've been in hospice for about eight months now, and there's not a lot to do, as you can imagine. | ||
| So one thing I decided to do was read 107 Days by Kamala Harris. | ||
| For those that might not understand it, it is a campaign post-mortem autobiography about the campaign. | ||
| And, you know, I am a Republican. | ||
| I will be honest about it. | ||
| But, you know, nothing has made me want to die more than reading 107 Days by Kamala Harris. | ||
| Ryan in Salem, Massachusetts, Independent Line. | ||
| Hello, Brian. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for C-Span and all you do for the country. | ||
| I just want to comment on the government closing. | ||
| They're fighting over health care for people, and they say, yeah, it's a trillion and a half dollars. | ||
| But why can't they take that out of the $4 trillion that they just gave tax cuts to the billionaire? | ||
| I mean, do we watch Donald Trump surrounded by his billionaire friends and giving up the rule of law? | ||
| And JD Vance is defending Nazi speak on the Republican talk lines. | ||
| And are people paying attention? | ||
| And now they're saying, because people want to demonstrate and enjoy the freedoms of the First Amendment, they're calling them terrorists. | ||
| You talk about the No Kings protests. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No Kings protest. | |
| Now, who's the terrorist? | ||
| People speaking up for democracy or jack-booted thugs that are massed that are taking people out of sleeping that are sleeping, attacking a building in Chicago and just arresting everybody. | ||
| I mean, it's on secret. | ||
| Do we watch the news and see what these people are doing? | ||
| And I don't know how any Christian can support such. | ||
| I mean, it's just hate manga. | ||
| I don't understand. | ||
| And I thank you for the time for allowing me to say this. | ||
| I'd like to say one more thing. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| If people look at the Constitution, because everyone's fighting over the government, but they should read the preamble to the Constitution, and I wish you would read it on the air after I hang up, because it tells how government is set up to serve the people, not to serve a guy that sold us out to Saudi Arabia for a jet and bitcoins for his kids and potting people. | ||
| I mean, look at the Melania coin. | ||
| The guy that set up that coin set up the failed Libra coin for the South American dictator, Maduro. | ||
| And now we're giving Maduro money and not giving it to the American farmers. | ||
| It just, it doesn't make sense. | ||
| No, we're not giving Maduro the money. | ||
| You're talking about Malay in Argentina. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Malay. | |
| I'm sorry. | ||
| We're at war with so many people. | ||
| It gets confusing. | ||
| All right, Brian. | ||
| And he mentioned the No Kings protest. | ||
| We will be having coverage of that protest here in D.C. | ||
| That starts at 12 p.m. here on C-SPAN. | ||
| You'll hear from Independent Senator Bernie Sanders and Democratic Senator Chris Murphy. | ||
| Others will also speak. | ||
| That's, again, the no protest march here in D.C. | ||
| It starts at noon Eastern, and it will be live here on C-SPAN. | ||
| We'll take a look at Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. | ||
| He was talking about the Democratic Party's commitment to getting Republicans to address their health care concerns. | ||
| Jakeem and I just had another really good meeting, and we're on the same page. | ||
| The American people are in a crisis in health care, and we are fighting for them. | ||
| We are on their side. | ||
| The American people are seeing that we are on their side, doing everything we can to get the Republicans to negotiate and address this crisis. | ||
| And it is devastating. | ||
| People every day are getting notices from their insurance companies in their states. | ||
| The average American on ACA could see their costs double, even triple. | ||
| And that's in red states, that's in blue states, that's in every state. | ||
| I just talked about a person in the North Country, Stefanik's district, who now pays $2,800 for health care. | ||
| They'll have to pay $20,000. | ||
| What is a family going to do when they see that to have health care, to keep their health care insurance, they got to come up with $20,000? | ||
| What do they do? | ||
| What do they tell their children that they can't go to the doctors they've been seeing? | ||
| What do they do if someone has cancer and is cut off from treatment? | ||
| What do they do if their hospital closes and another hospital is 100 miles away and they can't get to their doctors? | ||
| So the American people are facing one of the most devastating crises they have faced in terms of cost. | ||
| And we still have not heard crickets out of any negotiation with Johnson or with Thune. | ||
| The Republicans are on the defensive. | ||
| They keep changing their stories and changing their arguments. | ||
| But we are on the side of the American people. | ||
| That was on Thursday. | ||
| The Senate is recessed until Monday evening. | ||
| Here's Homer, Kansas City, Missouri, line for Democrats. | ||
| What's your top news story? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for C-SPAN. | ||
| Where do you start with this guy? | ||
| I mean, the person we have is 1600, is absolutely a berserker. | ||
| I mean, okay, we're blowing up boats in Venezuela with absolutely no proof that there's drugs or anything. | ||
| Finally, we've got two guys this week. | ||
| Let's hope that the attorneys are circling right now so we can find out. | ||
| Oh, because I don't think last I checked, I don't think they're smuggling bales of fentanyl in these boats. | ||
| But and that's not even the that's just one story. | ||
| How about the $40 billion he wants to give to Argentina? | ||
| And while our farmers are going to be, and this is part of their plan, I'm pretty sure, the farmers, these little farmers are going to get crushed and bought up by the big corporations. | ||
| And there's already politicians in our my one of my senators, Eric Schmidt, sold property to the Chinese, farmland property, which is absurdly high here in Missouri right now, like $10,000 an acre, to the Chinese, Chinese corporations through LL certain LLCs and shell companies. | ||
| What this guy is doing at 1600, this is going to go down in history. | ||
| And, well, and then what we're being shut down from is our health care. | ||
| Why do we pay more for any other than any other nation on earth for our health care? | ||
| And we're not even in the top 30 for infant mortality. | ||
| How can that be? | ||
| It's just it's beyond belief, you know, because I believe this, the federal society and the war on education has certainly panned out. | ||
| And when 40% of the people can support what we have at 1600 right now, that just speaks. | ||
| I shouldn't even have to say anything more. | ||
| All right, Homer. | ||
| And the first comment was about the strikes in the Caribbean. | ||
| This is the New York Times from yesterday. | ||
| Head of the U.S. military's Southern Command is stepping down. | ||
| Admiral Alvin Holsey is leaving less than a year into his tenure. | ||
| And as the Pentagon escalates attacks against boats in the Caribbean Sea, it says that the officer is leaving his job as head of U.S. Southern Command, which oversees all operations in Central and South America. | ||
| Even as the Pentagon has rapidly built up some 10,000 forces in the region in what it says is a major counter-drug and counterterrorism mission, he is the Admiral is suddenly departing. | ||
| It said it's unclear. | ||
| It's typically a three-year job in the midst of the biggest operation of his 37-year career. | ||
| But one current and one former U.S. official, both of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters, said that Admiral Holsey had raised concerns about the mission and the attacks on the alleged drug boats. | ||
| Paul in Nampa, Idaho, Republican, good morning, Paul. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for taking the call. | |
| Paul, his father was a great admiral in the Battle of Midway that saved our lives during World War II. | ||
| I recall that I got to meet him. | ||
| It's not a long story, but I'm not going to say it. | ||
| But anyway, I got to meet him. | ||
| I was in awe, let's just put it that way. | ||
| I think the King's story is one that's just so ridiculous. | ||
| It's sublime. | ||
| I just I see no point in doing it. | ||
| Yeah, so so you hate Donald Trump, you got TDS, and w what are you gonna what are you gonna do for the country if you were sitting on the throne and you got your your crown on? | ||
| That's kind of the way I look at it. | ||
| You can't give it all away as much as you'd like to, so you've got to keep some for all different kinds of things that are needed and necessary for this country to continue on a daily basis, hourly basis. | ||
| The thing I find most offensive is not being able to pay our men and women in military uniform that are working as we speak right now. | ||
| And it's. | ||
| So, Paul, they have been paid. | ||
| Active duty forces have been paid. | ||
| They were paid on Wednesday. | ||
| That's the 15th. | ||
| Their next paycheck would be at the beginning of next month, November 1st. | ||
| That is in question. | ||
| So, we don't know what's going to happen with that paycheck. | ||
| But so far, they have been paid, and you're right, they are still required to work. | ||
| Mark, Wilmington, North Carolina Independent. | ||
| Go ahead, Mark. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I just wanted to keep sort of my perspective on what's going on with Donald Trump and Donald Trump's behavior. | ||
| If you look at it through the lens of the Epstein files, in particular, for example, like the government shutdown preventing this representative from Arizona being sworn in, that prevents, she's the deciding vote on whether the Epstein files will be released. | ||
| As long as the government shutdown continues, she will not be sworn in or unless Mike Johnson decides to convene Congress so that she can be sworn in and the Epstein files could be released. | ||
| The other thing that I would like to mention is there was a reported meeting in the prison recently with Jelaine Maxwell in the chapel, which was hush-hush. | ||
| Apparently, the whole prison was locked down so that no one could see who went into the back door to have this particular meeting. | ||
| We don't know what went on there. | ||
| The other thing is, as long as the health care issue and the shutdown and everything else, that all reflects on this, you know, preventing the Epstein files from being released. | ||
| And the other thing, the most recent one, which was yesterday, George Santos, if we look at how Donald Trump operates, Donald Trump, typically, when he's going to do something regarding something outrageous, like we're predicting that he's going to do something, and we think to ourselves, oh my gosh, is he going to do it? | ||
| And then he'll do something that's a little bit like that. | ||
| But then he softens the idea, for example, bringing in troops into different cities like Los Angeles and everything else, and then progressively bringing them into other cities, leading up to like the No Kings protests. | ||
| I'm a little bit concerned about what's going on with that, but backing up a little bit with the idea that George Santos has been pardoned. | ||
| Commuted, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Commuted. | |
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, commuted. | |
| It makes me worry that this is softening the idea for releasing and pardoning Jelaine Maxwell. | ||
| And that is so typical of his behavior. | ||
| He will start to do things that incrementally incrementally soften the idea. | ||
| And then all of a sudden he pulls the trigger on something so outrageous. | ||
| Got it, Mark. | ||
| And there is also an Epstein-related article in today's post. | ||
| Epstein-linked Prince Andrew gives up his Duke of York title. | ||
| It says the move follows talks with the king and publication of parts of an accuser's memoir. | ||
| So Prince Andrew has agreed to relinquish his Duke of York title. | ||
| Here is Harold in Tennessee, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Harold. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, ma'am, for taking my call. | |
| Good morning to you, too. | ||
| This is just getting out of hand. | ||
| I ain't usually going to agree a whole lot with Chuck Scheever, even though I am a Democrat. | ||
| I'm not a big fan of his. | ||
| But now, he is spot on what's going to happen to people about their health care. | ||
| We are in a crisis. | ||
| If you're a middle-class, poor working person, you can't afford this insurance to take your insurance of what you pay now and triple that and see where you come out with. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And you know, old people can't afford to pay this. | |
| If people are disabled, I mean, this is beyond doubt. | ||
| And first, Mike Johnson, that man has got to be one of the, he's just unbelievable. | ||
| He is doing nothing but protecting a bunch of pedophiles. | ||
| You know, if there wasn't something in there, they'd be wanting to come out. | ||
| You know, if you had something that would free you, you'd want it to come out. | ||
| But that's exactly what he's doing. | ||
| That man does it in the name of God. | ||
| You know, that is just so unreal that anybody will use a church like he does. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But first, Ukraine, I don't know now if we're going to give them missiles or not. | |
| But if Joe Biden is the state president, that war would have been over with. | ||
| But now, you know, because Russia got nowhere to go. | ||
| But he can just call Trump and tell him, you know, something, something, and Trump will back out. | ||
| I thought sure last week that he was going to give them them missiles. | ||
| You know, that meeting and the talk with Putin on the phone, it just goes away. | ||
| But this health care and this shutdown, and this is where they put the people at. | ||
| You either shut down, you ain't got no work, or you go back to work and you can't afford no health insurance. | ||
| you get sick it's kind of like you're you know you're Harold what about you what's your What do you do for health insurance? | ||
| I have Medicare. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, I am fortunate. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm very fortunate to be in the position I'm in, but there's so many people here in Tennessee that signed up on this Obamacare. | ||
| Even Marjorie Taylor, she recognizes what's going on down in her district, what it's going to do to people. | ||
| You know, the wealthy people sitting up there that's got everything, they don't feel the pain. | ||
| They don't feel the pain from the grocery store. | ||
| All right, Harold. | ||
| And we are in our first hour. | ||
| We're talking about your top news story of the week. | ||
| Also, on this week's ceasefire, we had Republican Governor Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma, Democratic Governor Wes Moore of Maryland. | ||
| They are the chair and vice chair of the National Governors Association. | ||
| They joined host Dasha Burns for a conversation about how policies in Washington are impacting the states. | ||
| Among the thorniest issues are President Trump's threats to deploy the National Guard in his ongoing crackdown on crime. | ||
| Take a look. | ||
| The point that I would disagree with Governor Moore on is the President of the United States has the authority to federalize the troops in that state. | ||
| And so President Trump has a tough decision to make because when he sees ICE agents being attacked in a certain city, even though it might be over the objection of the local governor, the President of the United States has that right to do that. | ||
| And there's case law there. | ||
| President Eisenhower, over the objection of the opposite party governor in Arkansas to desegregate schools, called in the National Guard. | ||
| And so there's case law where that happens. | ||
| And when the President of the United States wants to federalize those troops, we all agree that he has the authority to do it. | ||
| Should he work with the governors? | ||
| 100%. | ||
| But then the question is, when there's a disagreement, when he calls Governor Newsom and says, hey, I'm going to send him in to protect a federal building and Newsom says no, then who has the authority? | ||
| Well, it's pretty clear in our Constitution that the President of the United States has that authority. | ||
| So we support President Trump on it. | ||
| The only thing I cautioned was let's not send, let's pit one state against another. | ||
| But I mean, I sent troops to the southern border in support of Governor Abbott, and I'll send them to Pritzker if he wants me to, to do something, or I'm going to send them to Memphis if Governor Lee calls me. | ||
| But that's the first time that's ours. | ||
| That's the big difference, right? | ||
| Upon the request of those governors. | ||
| It's so interesting to hear you both talk about this because I'm hearing this kind of like flipping of the script of Republican talking points versus Democratic talking points because Governor Moore, what you're saying is essentially a long-held Republican position around the primacy of states' rights over federal authority here. | ||
| What's your perspective on what you're hearing from your colleague here? | ||
| Well, no, and actually, and I completely agree with Governor Stitt, that the president has the authority to do it. | ||
| My question is the judgment, whether or not it's the right thing to do. | ||
| And I think about it in context of this, you know, and again, as someone who, you know, I've deployed with soldiers overseas. | ||
| I've worn the uniform of this country. | ||
| I've served with people who are willing to put their life on the line. | ||
| And all of us, each and every one of us as governors, we serve as commanders in chief of our National Guards. | ||
| That is a responsibility that we take very seriously. | ||
| And we owe it to the people who serve in uniform. | ||
| We owe it to their family members to be very, very smart and very sober about how, when, and where we mobilize these remarkable men and women. | ||
| And the point that, you know, the president absolutely has the authority to do it. | ||
| The thing that I would hope for is that don't remember who we are asked, don't forget who we are asking to mobilize. | ||
| These are citizen soldiers. | ||
| These are people who have jobs, people who have families, that we're asking them to leave both of those things because they trust the judgment of the commanders in chief. | ||
| That is this week's ceasefire, and that airs Friday nights at 7 and 10 p.m. Eastern. | ||
| It re-airs Saturday and Sunday morning at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| So right after this program, you'll be able to watch the full edition of this week's ceasefire starting at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| By the way, the Washington Examiner has this. | ||
| Abbott and Yunkin mobilize National Guard for No Kings rallies. | ||
| Of course, that's Governor Greg Abbott of Texas and Glenn Yunkin, Governor of Virginia, both Republicans. | ||
| That's in the Washington Examiner. | ||
| Back to your calls now. | ||
| Ed in Ohio, Republican line. | ||
| Hi, Ed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Well, I'd like to know Kings rally. | ||
| There's over 300 cities, whatever. | ||
| They're having it at one little left state. | ||
| It was at New Hampshire, just that state alone. | ||
| 300,000 people. | ||
| It's fun. | ||
| Antifa's involved is in it. | ||
| The money comes from all the rich, from John's. | ||
| It's being investigated by all the money finally. | ||
| All these riots and all this is all funded. | ||
| It's not real. | ||
| It's fake. | ||
| But this is the Democrat Party. | ||
| Like the shutdown right now. | ||
| They should be. | ||
| We already had a CR done up. | ||
| They should have redid it right away. | ||
| We could be negotiating right now. | ||
| Everybody's worried about their health care or whatever. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Right now they could be negotiating instead of doing nothing. | ||
| But they're going to wait till now that was only until November coming up. | ||
| Now it's going to expire. | ||
| Now they're going to come back because they still have the country shut down. | ||
| Schumer's fighting for his lifekeeping position. | ||
| He's primary. | ||
| He knows it. | ||
| That party. | ||
| He's old news. | ||
| The power professors, the communists in that party, he's old. | ||
| He's history. | ||
| He's sold out completely. | ||
| That's the only, their speaker, all of them. | ||
| So they're going to wait to the deadline and then they're going to try as a mercy. | ||
| Oh my God, that's another crisis check the little north in our country because they could be negotiating this right now and done the last to improved it. | ||
| But they want to add trillions that we cut. | ||
| All these other countries have put in. | ||
| People don't hear about that. | ||
| You know, the Democrats are very ill-informed voters, I notice when I listen. | ||
| Your callers. | ||
| Like they're talking to them guys. | ||
| They're talking about, oh, Trump doesn't want to talk to Epstein. | ||
| He wasn't on the island 20 times like Bill. | ||
| There's a lot of people really dirty in Washington. | ||
| If it is, we've held around this. | ||
| So, Ed, regarding the No Kings protest, this is Axios. | ||
| What to know about October 18th, No Kings protests. | ||
| There is a map here where all the activities are planned. | ||
| It says organizers expect millions to gather across the nation on Saturday, October 18th. | ||
| That's today, in an event Republican lawmakers decry as a, quote, hate America rally. | ||
| It says more than 2,700 events are planned across all 50 states as of Friday, according to organizers. | ||
| And we will be talking more about that later in the program. | ||
| We'll also be covering the Washington, D.C. rally that is set to start at 12 o'clock with live coverage here on C-SPAN. | ||
| Mary Alpina, Michigan Independent. | ||
| Good morning, Mary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| I'm a retired nurse, and I went for a continuing ed class a couple weeks ago. | ||
| So up on my algorithm came a story yesterday, and it was in the news, but it didn't get much coverage. | ||
| That while the representatives are back working in their districts, right, a sitting U.S. Congressman, his name is Corey Mills in Florida, has a restraining order against him by the current Miss USA, only in America. | ||
| Her name is Lindsay Lingston. | ||
| She was a Republican state committee woman, and he threatened to release intimate images to her current and future whatever. | ||
| And when they asked Speaker Mike Johnson about this, oh, it's no big deal. | ||
| So the character of the people in Washington has just gotten so low. | ||
| And then it comes across, George Santos gets his sentence commuted. | ||
| A long list of mostly white men, white-collar crime, that get their, you get, you get out, you're out of jail free. | ||
| You got Jared Kushner's father, Janine Pirro's husband. | ||
| The list goes on and on. | ||
| But then on another positive note, we went on and on about the Nobel Peace Prize on Monday. | ||
| And I don't know, and being a retired nurse, I looked up who won for medicine this year, and it happened to be two Americans, Mary Brukkow, Dr. Mary Brukow, Dr. Fred Ranschell. | ||
| And I'm going to look up today what they were up to, but they won for uncovering the key pathway the body uses to keep the immune system in check. | ||
| And the treatments are for diabetes, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and the big one is cancer and autoimmune diseases. | ||
| And after living and working through the pandemic, five going on six years ago, we sure need doctors that are looking into that. | ||
| And there was a caller. | ||
| Yeah, thanks for bringing that up, Mary. | ||
| And regarding your comments about Representative Corey Mills, here's the Hill. | ||
| This is two days ago. | ||
| Speaker Johnson suggests Ethics Committee will take a look at Corey Mills over restraining order. | ||
| And this is what it says: that the speaker praised Corey Mills. | ||
| This is a Republican of Florida as a, quote, faithful colleague, but suggested the Ethics Committee will investigate him after a Florida judge issued a restraining order against Mills over allegations that he threatened a former girlfriend. | ||
| Quote, I have not heard or looked into any of the details of that. | ||
| I've been a little busy. | ||
| We have a House Ethics Committee. | ||
| If it warrants that, I'm sure they'll look into that. | ||
| That's atthehill.com. | ||
| Here is Loretta in Chino, California, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Loretta. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| What's your top news story, Loretta? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My top news story is actually: there was a previous caller who was talking about 107 Days written by previous Vice President Kimla Harris. | |
| And I have to say, I really did not agree with her commentary on her book. | ||
| I think she just clearly didn't know how to read it. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Here is Bernard, New York, Republican. | ||
| You're on the air, Bernard. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, thank you. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| On the phone for a long time. | ||
| I want to talk about something that I think is one of the most important things. | ||
| I had my wife and my daughter both had schizophrenia. | ||
| People do not understand. | ||
| They keep saying when people murder people, like remember that guy on the bus, he had a knife in his hand, and that innocent young lady sat down, he turned around, he slaughtered her with the knife. | ||
| That is not mental illness. | ||
| That is evil. | ||
| And that is going to be my subject. | ||
| I want to explain evil to people, all right, because there's a lot of it going on. | ||
| Now, one of the worst things that's happening in America today that is an evil, it is not a sickness, is the trans movement. | ||
| Because this movement not only destroys the seven-year-old, but it destroys the entire life of the child. | ||
| Here's why. | ||
| We have DNA. | ||
| The scientists cannot change your DNA. | ||
| Therefore, if you are a male and you are a seven or a female, but I'll use the male, and you are seven years old and your mother or whoever decides, oh, he needs to be, he's really a girl because he plays with toys, as one Hollywood said. | ||
| So we're going to have an operation on him. | ||
| So at seven years old, they remove his penis with the surgeon's knife. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So, Bernard, this is not really a news story for this week. | ||
| So I'm going to move on to Robert in Chesterfield, Virginia, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning, Robert. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| You know, what Donald Trump done with George Santos, I can't understand for any reason why he would commute that guy's sentence. | ||
| He ain't even started pulling it just barely started in there several months. | ||
| But I suspect that Santos was in there. | ||
| They said he was in solitary confinement. | ||
| I suspect that he was in there because he knows too much about Trump and a lot of other politicians up there. | ||
| They were either keeping locked up in the cell by himself all the time, and he got to Trump and Trump let him out. | ||
| And Donald Trump is a crooked son of gun. | ||
| And I'm going to tell you what. | ||
| If this country don't get together and get the crooks out of there, if things are going to get so bad, we're going to have a civil war. | ||
| There's no doubt about it. | ||
| But Trump's poor family is going to have to pay back for what he's doing in their future. | ||
| And he ain't got sense enough to realize that, though. | ||
| Well, y'all have a good day. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right, Robert. | ||
| And here's Mary in St. Paul, Minnesota, Democrat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hello. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| You know, I'm very, very disappointed and saddened by what is happening in our country these days when we are normalizing behavior that used to be associated with socialist countries, or certainly, if not socialists, with the communist society. | ||
| And when I say communist, I'm not saying it the way that some people on the right would use it. | ||
| You don't label people like Sanders or other individuals in our country who, if they call themselves Social Democrats, let them call themselves Social Democrats, but don't give them this other label. | ||
| But what I'm concerned about, really, and we see it more and more, is the normalization of all kinds of things that used to not be typically American. | ||
| On my first trip to Europe, way back years ago, we were in a restaurant with a man who was a newspaper reporter, a Spanish newspaper reporter in Toledo, Spain. | ||
| And we asked him what was Franco like. | ||
| At that time, Franco was the dictator of Spain. | ||
| He hadn't yet, you know, he was still a dictator. | ||
| And the young man said, just a minute, we can't talk. | ||
| And we were in a restaurant with about, oh, maybe 80 people. | ||
| Well, we went out of the restaurant. | ||
| We left the restaurant. | ||
| We're walking down the street. | ||
| And the gentleman said, now I can talk to you about Franco. | ||
| And I said, well, why couldn't you tell us what he was like inside the restaurant? | ||
| He said, because someone might have been listening, and they would report me to the authorities if I were saying anything negative. | ||
| And I thought about this in recent times, when I've been thinking about it in recent times, when we hear of all the incidents that are occurring, and our people will become more and more afraid of their really, we have the freedoms to say and speak whenever we like. | ||
| And I can recall how shocked I was that this guy could not talk in a restaurant because he thought someone might overhear him. | ||
| All right, Mary. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| You wanted to say something else? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I just want to tell you, I appreciate anyone who will listen carefully because we do know things are not the way they should be in our democracy, which we want to keep. | |
| That's it. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And here's President Trump at the White House. | ||
| Wednesday, he was asked about the potential ground strikes in Venezuela and his decision to authorize CIA covert operations there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What's the next step in this war on cartels? | |
| And are you considering options? | ||
| Are you considering strikes on land? | ||
| Well, I don't want to tell you exactly, but we are certainly looking at land now because we've got the sea very well under control. | ||
| We've had a couple of days where there isn't a boat to be found. | ||
| And I view that as a good thing, not a bad thing. | ||
| But we had tremendous amounts coming in by boats, by very expensive boats. | ||
| You know, they have a lot of money, very fast, very expensive boats that were pretty big. | ||
| And the way you look at it is every boat that we knock out, we save 25,000 American lives. | ||
| So every time you see a boat and you feel badly, you say, wow, that's rough. | ||
| It is rough. | ||
| But if you lose three people and save 25,000 people, these are people that are killing our population. | ||
| Every boat is saving 25,000 lives. | ||
| And you can see it. | ||
| The boats get hit. | ||
| And you see that fentanyl all over the ocean. | ||
| It's like floating in bags. | ||
| It's all over the place. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why did you authorize the CIA to go into Venezuela? | |
| And is there more information you can share about these strikes on the alleged state? | ||
| Well, I can't do that. | ||
| I authorized for two reasons, really. | ||
| Number one, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America. | ||
| They came in through the border. | ||
| They came in because we had an open border policy. | ||
| And as soon as I heard that, I said a lot of these countries, they're not the only country, but they're the worst abuser. | ||
| And they've entered their, they've allowed thousands and thousands of prisoners, mental institutions, people from mental institutions, insane asylums, emptied out into the United States. | ||
| We're bringing them back. | ||
| But that's a really bad thing. | ||
| And they did it at a level that probably not, many, many countries have done it, but not like Venezuela. | ||
| They were down and dirty. | ||
| And the other thing of drugs. | ||
| We have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela. | ||
| And a lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea, so you get to see that. | ||
| But we're going to stop them by land also. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Does the CIA have authority to take Al Paduro? | |
| Oh, I don't want to answer a question like that. | ||
| That's a ridiculous question for me to be given. | ||
| Not really a ridiculous question, but wouldn't it be a ridiculous question for me to answer? | ||
| And checking in with social media, here's Gerald on Facebook. | ||
| The Democrats are keeping the government shut down, even though they voted for this exact same bill in December. | ||
| The only thing that has changed is a new president, so this is all on the Democrats. | ||
| Catherine says, Trump gave $40 billion to help Argentina economy. | ||
| Meanwhile, as the Affordable Care Act marketplace begins to open across states, recipients are seeing for the first time how their premiums will spike next year, sometimes by nearly 400%, as a result of the GOP's subsidy cuts. | ||
| And Marcy says, President Trump working through his list of campaign promises. | ||
| Glad we have a fantastic president and, quote, no king. | ||
| Hope everyone who attends has a fun and safe time at the No Kings parties today. | ||
| Here's Susan, Worcester, Massachusetts, Republican. | ||
| Good morning, Susan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how are you, Mimi? | |
| Good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just wanted to tell the other guy that was talking about who's funding all this, you know, all these demonstrations against the president, and that's just what it is. | |
| It's George Zoroast. | ||
| I don't know if you know this, but he's already being investigated. | ||
| It's followed the money. | ||
| He's the one doing everything, and he'll be going to prison, too. | ||
| Jack Reed is next. | ||
| He's going to be indicted. | ||
| You know, Jack Smith? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jack Reed. | |
| Oh, I'm sorry. | ||
| Jack Smith. | ||
| Yes, he'll be the next one. | ||
| But you know what? | ||
| Like I wrote in my little speech to Trump, we're the big ones, the ones that screwed you from day one. | ||
| They didn't want you. | ||
| It was all together. | ||
| The Obamas, Biden, Coney. | ||
| They're all going to be getting this too, Mimi. | ||
| And I'm happy. | ||
| Why should we let these crumbs get away with everything? | ||
| They should be held accountable for what they've done. | ||
| They never let this guy be president. | ||
| They didn't like him. | ||
| Well, tough baloney. | ||
| He's one of the best presidents I've ever seen. | ||
| Look about the tomahawks. | ||
| I'm happy. | ||
| You Democrat, if we give him all these tomahawks, we're going to be in World War III. | ||
| Don't they understand? | ||
| Thanks to Biden. | ||
| Another thing, the auto pin's being investigated. | ||
| Biden's being investigated. | ||
| And they're off to all. | ||
| So, Susan, you started with George Soros. | ||
| You might not have seen this. | ||
| It just came out. | ||
| Here it is on the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| And I'll read you a bit of it. | ||
| It says, how Soros is preparing for a battle with the Trump administration. | ||
| As threats from the administration mount, George and Alex Soros are giving out as many grants as ever. | ||
| It says, soon after a Justice Department official instructed attorneys to probe George Soros' philanthropic empire last month, Soros' son Alex joked to a friend, quote, that the Stalinists had a saying for this. | ||
| Give me the man and I will give you the case against him. | ||
| Threats from the Trump administration are mounting toward the two Soroses and other Democratic mega donors as the president has accused them of supporting violent protests and engaging in unlawful activity. | ||
| In addition to Justice Department scrutiny, the Trump administration is preparing changes at the Internal Revenue Service that would allow the agency to more easily pursue criminal inquiries of left-leaning groups like the Soros-funded Open Society Foundations. | ||
| Officials at the foundation say their activities are lawful and thoroughly documented and that they haven't been contacted by the Justice Department or the IRS. | ||
| The foundation is continuing to hand out millions of dollars in grants even as it girds for a fight. | ||
| That's at the Wall Street Journal in today's edition if you'd like to take a look. | ||
| Sharon in Heron, Illinois, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning, Sharon. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I just got a phone call before 6 o'clock this morning to say my SNAP benefit has been declined as of November 1st. | |
| I make on Social Security $1,151 per month. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| Some of the $150 I was getting on SNAP helped me a lot. | ||
| Not buy all my groceries because you know you can't buy groceries at $150 a month for a single person. | ||
| This administration sucks fully. | ||
| And I don't know. | ||
| And you blame this administration for the shutdown, Sharon? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Why is that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because they don't do a damn thing besides for the poor people. | |
| I am beyond poor. | ||
| I made $13,000, a little over $13,000 last month last year. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| Who can live on that? | ||
| I am low property, and they're taking the $150 away from me. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And this is USA Today. | ||
| It says this. | ||
| This was from two days ago. | ||
| SNAP benefits face, quote, insufficient funds in November if shutdown continues, according to the USDA. | ||
| Here is Joe, Springfield, Massachusetts, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Joe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| I was just wondering if you could tell me that all the immigrants that come in, how many came in? | ||
| I think I'm going to take $2,000. | ||
| Yep, no, your top news story, Joe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Excuse me? | |
| Your top news story. | ||
| That's what we're talking about. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The shutdown. | |
| The shutdown. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| What did you want to say about it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was wondering if you could pull up any of the fraud and abuse that they keep on saying that is holding up the shutdown for not giving us. | |
| They can give Argentina millions of dollars, but they can't, our tax dollars, but they can't give health care to the American people. | ||
| I was just wondering if you could come up with any stats for me. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And this is Dean in Austin, Texas, Republican. | ||
| Go ahead, Dean. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for taking my call, Mimi. | |
| I watch every weekend. | ||
| I've never called in before. | ||
| Golly, I just can't understand how the country is so divided. | ||
| You know, this shutdown, it's supposed to be a clean resolution. | ||
| The Democrats are trying to relitigate the big, beautiful bill. | ||
| I mean, that's the way I see it. | ||
| They need to just open up the government. | ||
| Everybody's hating on Trump. | ||
| Trump doesn't even take a salary. | ||
| You know, I'm 65 years old. | ||
| I've lived through several presidents. | ||
| Obamacare sold the American people. | ||
| Obama sold the American people a bill of goods that was a lie from the start. | ||
| Obamacare was set up to fail the American people. | ||
| It's caused this huge, huge, bad deal all across. | ||
| I feel so bad for people that are going to be getting their insurance rates raised like this. | ||
| It's unacceptable, but we have to find a better way. | ||
| Obamacare is not the answer. | ||
| All right, Dean. | ||
| And we will have more time later in the program to get your thoughts and opinions on what's happening this week and around Washington. | ||
| But later on the Washington Journal, we've got Washington Times online opinion editor, Cheryl Chumbley. | ||
| She'll discuss views of the federal shutdown and other news of the day. | ||
| But first, Maurice Mitchell of the Working Families Party, one of the participating groups in today's No Kings rallies. | ||
| He'll join us to talk about the nationwide effort and what it hopes to achieve. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Past president. | |
| Why? | ||
| Why are you doing this? | ||
| This is outrageous. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is a kangaroo quarrel. | |
| 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 aisle into a dialogue. | ||
| Ceasefire on the network that doesn't take sides. | ||
| Fridays at 7 and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| This Sunday, watch the premiere of C-SPAN's bold new original series, America's Book Club, with our guest, John Grisham, former politician, lawyer, and best-selling author, whose books, including A Time to Kill, The Firm, and The Pelican Brief. | ||
| He joins our host, renowned author and civic leader, David Rubenstein. | ||
| We just sold the film much to the firm to Paramount for more money than made in 10 years of practicing law. | ||
| After you heard that, how long after that did you quit the practice of law? | ||
| 15 minutes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Watch America's Book Club with John Grisham, Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | |
| Get C-SPAN wherever you are with C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app that puts you at the center of democracy, live and on demand. | ||
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| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| We're joined now by Maurice Mitchell, National Director of the Working Families Party, to talk about the No Kings rallies happening today. | ||
| Maurice, welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's good to be with you. | |
| So can you first give us an idea of the Working Families Party? | ||
| When did it start and why? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Well, the Working Families Party started 27 years ago in New York. | ||
| We're now all over the country. | ||
| And we started because we believed that everyday working people needed a party of its own. | ||
| We recognize that major changes in the way our country was moving, like free trade agreements like NAFTA, that since then have moved so many jobs, really good working class jobs from our country's industrial base to all types of foreign countries, as well as things like the quote-unquote welfare reform that made it harder for especially poor families to be able to get the resources that they needed. | ||
| And the 94 crime bill that had a generation of people over incarcerated. | ||
| Those policies were not focused on the interests of working people. | ||
| And we needed a political movement and a political party that focused on a laser on things like affordability, on things like making sure that people could organize unions, on making sure that we had real racial justice and actually recognized the harms of the past and tried to restore them. | ||
| And since then, we've recruited thousands of people to run on the local level, primarily, but all the way up to govern because we think when every day, we believe this crazy idea that in a democracy, the people should govern, not corporations, not lobbyists, not billionaire oligarchs, but everyday people. | ||
| So why do you feel like you needed a different party? | ||
| Why not work within the Democratic Party? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, if this was a country like Canada or Mexico or Europe where there's a parliamentary democracy, it would be a lot clearer. | |
| Basically, we are in coalition with the Democrats against the far right, but we're also, we also challenge the Democrats and push back against the Democrats' corporate interest for the people. | ||
| And there's a lot of countries that have a setup like this, where there are many parties that have diverse interests and they join in coalition in order to govern. | ||
| We do that with the Democrats. | ||
| And look, we agree with the Democrats that MAGA and the right wing and the oligarchs that have taken over the Republican Party are doing serious damage and are an existential threat to our democracy. | ||
| And we also think that the interest of AIPAC and AI and crypto and the pharmaceutical company and the oil and gas lobby have way too much standing in our governance in general and are often paying for Democratic and Republican politicians, which is why we need a third space in American politics that are free from those corporate interests and those corporate influences. | ||
| All right, so tell us about the No Kings protests that are happening today and your role in them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, No Kings is a coalition of grassroots organizations as well as just everyday people in every corner of this country. | |
| We think there's probably going to be more than 2,500 protests. | ||
| People are planning to peacefully protest and rally against authoritarianism. | ||
| And when I say authoritarianism, I mean will of a person, the rule of a person, the rule of a would-be king versus rule of the people. | ||
| And our mission is really simple. | ||
| We want to defend democracy. | ||
| We want to demand accountability from anybody who abuses power, no matter the party. | ||
| This is much bigger than partisan politics. | ||
| This is about the very core of the principles of this country, democracy and the rule of the people. | ||
| And it's a movement that was born from the belief that nobody is above accountability, that no president is above accountability, no politician, no oligarch, no party. | ||
| And we want everybody to come together based on that ideal. | ||
| And Maurice, a caller in our last segment was talking about the No Kings rallies and saying that these were all being funded by George Soros and other wealthy Democrats. | ||
| Who is funding these rallies? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the thing that I would say to you and the caller is, you know, the question is better addressed to the people in Wilmington, Delaware, or Greeley, Colorado, or the dozens and dozens of places that everyday people are taking their time, taking their energy, taking their money, creating their own signs over the weekend in order to engage in these rallies. | |
| It's fueled by the people. | ||
| And, you know, the idea that there's some sort of vast conspiracy that is organizing this, usually what you might think on the face is actually what's happening. | ||
| What's happening is that millions of people are frustrated with the direction of this country. | ||
| There is a vast conspiracy. | ||
| The conspiracy is out in the open. | ||
| The top richest people, people like Elon Musk, you know, and other folks, their influence in our system of government has corroded our democracy. | ||
| They are making deals with politicians like Donald Trump. | ||
| Donald Trump himself is self-dealing. | ||
| Him and his family are making deals all across the world. | ||
| And he's trying to treat this country like his personal piggy bank. | ||
| And he's jealous of the authoritarians around the world. | ||
| And he wants to mimic that authoritarian power in this country. | ||
| And people, regardless of your party, should be able to recognize that that's wrong and that's un-American. | ||
| Maurice Mitchell of the Working Families Party is our guest. | ||
| If you'd like to speak to him, you can start calling in now. | ||
| The lines are by party. | ||
| So Republicans are on 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| We also have a line set aside for members of the Working Families Party. | ||
| You can call us on 202-748-8003. | ||
| That's the same line you can use to text us. | ||
| Maurice, yesterday, Speaker Johnson expressed his views about the No Kings rally. | ||
| I'll play a portion and then get your response. | ||
| Tomorrow, the Democrat leaders are going to join for a big party out on the National Mall. | ||
| They're going to descend on our capital for their much anticipated so-called No Kings rally. | ||
| We refer to it by its more accurate description, the Hate America rally, okay? | ||
| And I'm not sure how anybody can refute that. | ||
| If you think about what's going to happen here tomorrow, you're going to bring together the Marxists, the socialists, the Antifa advocates, the anarchists, and the pro-Hamas wing of the far-left Democrat Party. | ||
| That is the modern Democratic Party. | ||
| That's where they've gone. | ||
| And the Hate America rally is the common theme among all those groups. | ||
| Listen to the language they use themselves. | ||
| Many of them don't like living in America. | ||
| They hate capitalism. | ||
| They hate our free enterprise system. | ||
| They hate our principles. | ||
| They hate the ideas that we come in to work every day to fight for, to preserve, and the greatest nation in the history of the world. | ||
| They hate the idea of individual freedom and limited government. | ||
| They hate the idea of the rule of law. | ||
| They fight against it all the time. | ||
| They hate the idea of peace through strength. | ||
| They lobby against it all the time. | ||
| Individual freedom, limited government, the rule of law, peace through strength, fiscal responsibility, free markets, human dignity, the things that lead to human flourishing, the things that made us the greatest nation in the history of the world. | ||
| They're opposed to law enforcement. | ||
| They're opposed to military. | ||
| And their votes show it over and over. | ||
| That's the collection of voices that you'll hear tomorrow that the Democrats will go out and raise their hands with and cheer with. | ||
| Maurice Mitchell, your response to that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think the fact that Speaker Mike Johnson and I've noticed leading Republicans have been spending so much time trying to talk about and frame this Rally and peaceful protest of what would be millions of people around the country tells me something more about their fear of democracy, their fear of free speech than anything else. | |
| I can't think of anything more American than people coming together and expressing their points of view, including points of view that you might dislike. | ||
| And I remember, I'm old enough to remember, there was a time where Democrats and Republicans agreed on that and understood that it was very American and very much a part of our democracy to support peaceful protest. | ||
| And, you know, it's kind of troubling that politicians, including leading politicians, have become so thin-skinned that when millions of Americans raise their voices, they don't listen. | ||
| Instead, they rebuke them. | ||
| He's the Speaker of the House of the United States of America, not the Speaker of the House of MAGA or Republicans. | ||
| And it's actually pretty disappointing and concerning that when millions of Americans, millions of people that he represents are raising their voices, he can't find anything patriotic in that. | ||
| I think the mark of patriotism, he talked about hating America, the mark of patriotism is actually expressing your constitutional rights. | ||
| One of those constitutional rights is the right to assemble and the right to free speech. | ||
| And I think it's beautiful that so many people around the country. | ||
| So Maurice, he did mention Antifa. | ||
| He mentioned Hamas, Marxists. | ||
| Does your organization have any affiliation with any of those groups that he mentioned? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The Working Families Party is affiliated with working people all across the country. | |
| This is why we're running 800 candidates in November's election to run for local office to govern for the people. | ||
| You know, you want to know what we care about? | ||
| Healthcare, making sure that people could stay in their homes, making sure that people's rents are affordable. | ||
| You know, maybe, maybe in Speaker Mike Johnson's view, you know, politicians and grassroots organizations and everyday people fighting to make sure that their neighbors could stay in their homes and afford their health care is radical or harmful. | ||
| I think it's American. | ||
| No, your website, the Working Families website, says that you and your allies cumulative spent $2 million in support of Zorhan Mamdani in his quest to become mayor of New York City. | ||
| Why? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it goes back to what we've been talking about. | |
| Americans all across this country and in the city of New York are really concerned about affording to stay in their homes, to stay in their communities. | ||
| The political establishment is interested in what the real estate lobby is talking about, what the pharmaceutical lobby is talking about. | ||
| And unfortunately, there's few lobbies for everyday people. | ||
| We need to elect champions that are willing to fight for the interests of everyday people and keep cities like New York affordable. | ||
| That's why we're so proud to have endorsed Sora Mamdani in the Democratic primary, why we're proud that he'll be on the Working Families Party line in November. | ||
| And we encourage anybody who's listening in New York City to vote for him on the Working Families Party line. | ||
| He has focused like a laser on the interest of affordability for New Yorkers. | ||
| That's why he's built the largest and most diverse movement and coalition of New Yorkers all across New York City who just want a city that works for them. | ||
| And we want a country that works for us. | ||
| You know, it's interesting when I hear people like Speaker Mike Johnson, I hear somebody that's so disconnected from everyday working people that he has to, you know, live in a fantasy world where the calls from everyday working people sound like the most scary, radical, you know, ideas possible. | ||
| But when you listen, and we do because we knock on doors, we're in communities, people just want basic health care. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, Maurice, let's talk to callers and we'll start on the Republican line in Pearl City, Hawaii. | ||
| Roy, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Maurice, and good morning, Mimi. | |
| Thank you both so much for taking that time to speak with me today. | ||
| It is a little early here in Pearl City, Hawaii. | ||
| It's not even three o'clock in the morning, so please bear with me. | ||
| So, Maurice, if I may, I would like to ask you a question. | ||
| Now, I know you've probably heard the criticism that the vast majority of these protests are paid protesters, and that's nothing against what's going on today. | ||
| But do you at least admit that the vast majority of these folks are paid by organizations much higher than it's not a grassroots movement? | ||
| And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I personally know people who have attended these protests and have received paychecks. | ||
| So, can you just respond to that? | ||
| This is not, please, please, please, please don't insult my intelligence and act like this is just some spontaneous movement. | ||
| I know these folks are paid. | ||
| Roy, Roy, can you tell us what protests are you talking about that you know the people are paid? | ||
| Can you give us an example? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No Kings. | |
| The previous No Kings protest in June. | ||
| In June, that's correct. | ||
| And what city? | ||
| Do you remember what city that they were in? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was my second cousin in Seattle who sent me a photograph of their $1,000 paycheck for standing outside holding a sign for about two hours. | |
| That's what I know. | ||
| $1,000 for two hours. | ||
| That's not bad. | ||
| What do you say, Maurice? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's good work if you could get it, callers. | |
| So what I would say, caller, thank you for the call. | ||
| Thanks for staying up and being so alert at 3 a.m. | ||
| And look, I can't speak to your experience or the experience of your second cousin, but what I would say is this is not spontaneous. | ||
| This is organized, of course. | ||
| Like you could go on a website and the organizations that are part of this coalition, it's pretty clear. | ||
| There's grassroots organizations, labor institutions, all types of organizations, organizations that are really small and are in small counties who are coming together in order to, over the past few weeks, have been reaching out to their neighbors to organize these rallies and protest. | ||
| And that's called democracy. | ||
| It happens every single day with all types of organizations and all types of efforts from left, right, center, you name it. | ||
| Now, the idea that the individuals, the millions of individuals that are going to be out on America's streets today are somehow paid or coerced. | ||
| You know, I would just say I have a lot more respect for the people of America than to think that they would be moved by a paycheck and not moved by their convictions. | ||
| And I mean, there's a lot more efficient ways to organize millions of people out the street than to set up a paycheck. | ||
| What actually is happening is people are concerned about their health care. | ||
| People are concerned about the government shutdown. | ||
| People are concerned about their democracy. | ||
| Sometimes it just is what it is. | ||
| When you see millions of people on the street, it means that millions of people all across the country are deeply concerned. | ||
| And I would ask people who don't necessarily understand or are curious or might be confused by why these folks are on the street to listen. | ||
| All right, here's Roland, Independent Line, Detroit, Michigan. | ||
| Good morning, Roland. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Grand Rising to both of you. | |
| Maurice, I'm glad to hear about your organization because I contend that the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are a distinction without a difference. | ||
| They're like a good cop, bad cop. | ||
| They're different sides of the same coin. | ||
| So is that why your group was organized? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| I'll go back to what I said previously. | ||
| 26 years ago, a lot of the folks who started the Working Families Party and labor unions and grassroots organizations were deeply disappointed in the direction the Democratic Party was going and the relationship the Democratic Party at that time was building with Wall Street, the corporate capture of our politics in general. | ||
| And that's only intensified. | ||
| And the reasons why the Working Families Party started 26, 27 years ago are even more important and more true today. | ||
| And so, yes, Cole, you're absolutely right. | ||
| There are distinctions between Democrats and Republicans. | ||
| That's why we are in coalition with Democrats, often against the right wing. | ||
| However, there are similarities, and we need to be honest about that. | ||
| Oftentimes, Republicans and Democrats are on the same page when it comes to foreign wars and just expanding warfare, are on the same page when it comes to picking up the phone and listening to what the lobbyists that support cryptocurrency or AI or big tech or AIPAC or any of the number of lobbies or the pharmaceutical company have to say and maybe aren't as ready to listen to everyday working people. | ||
| This is why we need parties, movements, and organizations and elected officials like Zora Mandani that you mentioned before from the Working Families Party. | ||
| Darren, the political establishment honest. | ||
| Darren in Colorado, Align for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| $1,000 per person. | ||
| Well, I missed my first check, I guess, on the first No Kings rally. | ||
| It's forthcoming. | ||
| If the reason I'm calling, sir, I just wanted to thank you and C-SPAN for having you on so much to dispel some of these ridiculous right-wing talking points about, you know, this is a hate American rally. | ||
| I'm a veteran and I love this country and I'm going to be out with young and old people that love this country too and want to see it in a different direction. | ||
| And, you know, we. | ||
| What are you specifically protesting, Darren, when you go out today? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm protesting how Americans are being treated, how immigrants are being treated. | |
| You know, if we so call ourselves such a Christian nation, we need to start acting like it. | ||
| Taking people's Medicaid. | ||
| The release of George Shurius, meaning I wish you'd play the tape where Trump even said on an interview, oh, yeah, he was a big liar, but you know what about it? | ||
| We have to turn this course. | ||
| Just the horrible actions of this administration have gone too far. | ||
| And I want to tell all my right-wing people out there, I'm a proud American. | ||
| I'm going to be out there with Americans. | ||
| And I would hope that you would maybe join us if you see that this is going in the wrong direction. | ||
| And again, C-SPAN and Mr. Mitchell, thank you very much. | ||
| Great, Darren. | ||
| Any comment, Maurice? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, thank you, caller, and also thank you for your service. | |
| And I couldn't agree more with your caller. | ||
| This rally and this movement and these protests around the country are much bigger than partisanship. | ||
| It's really a call from the people of America, really, about what direction this country is to go in. | ||
| Is it going to go in a more authoritarian direction where we begin to be comfortable with the idea that ICE and border control are nothing more than the president's personal police force and that he has free reign to use the National Guard in order to invade U.S. cities? | ||
| And we become comfortable with the idea of the U.S. military on our streets, where we get used to the president just making untolds of money, him and his family, and all types of self-dealing, like many of the authoritarians and oligarchs around the world. | ||
| If we get comfortable with the idea that the president could use the Department of Justice as his own tool for retribution, that's what's on the table. | ||
| And if you are a supporter of this president, if you're a supporter of Donald Trump, just imagine if all the things that he was doing was done in the name of Democrats or in the name of, you know, pick a Democratic president, Barack Obama. | ||
| These principles are supposed to allow all of us, regardless of our political affiliation, live in a country together and figure out how to struggle, how to debate, how to disagree in a way where we're moving forward as a country. | ||
| And the people who are protesting, including proud veterans like our last caller, are protesting in the name of those principles. | ||
| Karen in Whitmore Lake, Michigan, a Republican, you're on with Maurice Mitchell. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Mitchell said his party was formed as an sort of anti-NAFTA sentiment. | |
| So he should be thanking President Trump for his work on revising NAFTA and the USMCA. | ||
| The murderous Antifa has been proven by Andy No, who exposed real evidence that Antifa is embedding in the No Kings protests. | ||
| Pro-labor, SEIU pensions. | ||
| Let's talk about the health and the status of the SEIU pensions the last, I don't know, gazillion years. | ||
| Tesla takedowns, Occupy Wall Street, Antifa, BLM, indivisible, no kings, no difference. | ||
| It's going to be fun, just the same old tired people out there making noise, banging on pots, who cares? | ||
| There is only one king, and that's Jesus Christ. | ||
| There is a definite distinction between Democrats and Republicans. | ||
| Democrats went from canceled culture super quickly to assimilation culture celebrating nations like the insurance executive. | ||
| And of course, we know our beloved Charlie Kirk. | ||
| So, you know, it's not a side to be proud of. | ||
| So, okay, let's get a response. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, thank you, Caller. | |
| You know, what I would say is that what I've learned is that because I'm in communities often and I talk to people, like it's election season, I'm knocking on doors. | ||
| I meet people who are Republicans, Independents, Democrats. | ||
| And what I notice is in communities, you know, we have differences, but neighbors who are Republicans or Democrats or Independents rely on one another. | ||
| They often are parishioners at the same churches. | ||
| They send their kids to the same schools and, you know, might even support each other when it comes to child care. | ||
| What I hear from the caller is a lot of the talking points and frankly, with all due respect to the caller, misinformation that I find online. | ||
| I find on social media. | ||
| And I would encourage everybody listening, including the caller, to test some of those ideas that we might live in a world where, you know, Democrats or whoever you identify as a Democrat is, you know, the distinctions are horrible and intense and believe in some awful things. | ||
| And Republicans, you know, are the, you know, and the MAGA movement, I guess, is the, you know, the only way. | ||
| Test that out in community. | ||
| Talk to some folks. | ||
| Find people who you disagree with in your community. | ||
| I think you might be surprised. | ||
| And I think you might be surprised by who's out on the streets today. | ||
| You're going to see people of all stripes. | ||
| You will see young people. | ||
| You'll see older folks. | ||
| You'll see retirees. | ||
| You'll see veterans. | ||
| You'll see activists as well as first-time activists and people who have never ever organized or protest in their lives that decided that today was the day. | ||
| And I think you might be proud, even if you might disagree, by our traditions in this country and the fact that we could even do something like this in a peaceful way, express our voices, express our concerns, and channel them in a productive way. | ||
| To me, there's nothing more American than that. | ||
| And I hope everybody, if you're a working families party person, Democrat or Republican, you could agree that that's pretty special. | ||
| Here's Rhonda in Jersey Shore, New Jersey, Democrat. | ||
| Go ahead, Rhonda. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning, young man, Dingo Mitchell. | |
| I want to tell you how incredibly proud I am of you this morning. | ||
| And I want you to take a message to America for me today. | ||
| It's we are one in all that is. | ||
| That means we are one in God. | ||
| We're spirit beings in white, brown, and black bodies. | ||
| We are sisters and brothers in Christ Jesus. | ||
| And this fake Mormon theology that they're putting out here, this European old Hitler movement they're trying to bring into the United States of America is unacceptable. | ||
| We will not accept it. | ||
| We are not paid protesters. | ||
| We are one in all that is. | ||
| Rhonda, are you protesting today? | ||
| I wish I could. | ||
| I'm 70 years old tomorrow. | ||
| I protest with my mother when I was a little girl during the civil rights movement. | ||
| She had us right out there with her. | ||
| She cried like a baby when John F. Kennedy was murdered. | ||
| My mother went to Howard. | ||
| She got a full scholarship to go to Howard University, right where Kamala Harris went. | ||
| And she was a proud black woman. | ||
| All right, Rhonda. | ||
| And happy birthday for tomorrow. | ||
| Go ahead, Maurice. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Happy birthday, caller. | |
| And also, I'm also a proud Howard University Bison. | ||
| So your mother was wise to choose that university for sure. | ||
| And, you know, thank you for your commitment to the civil rights movement and for continuing to stay committed throughout all the years. | ||
| And we need that commitment from everybody. | ||
| Let's give one more call in, Maurice. | ||
| Sorry, Ray in Tennessee is a Republican. | ||
| Go ahead, Ray. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| I'm 82 years old. | ||
| I'm a veteran, Vietnam. | ||
| And I've seen this country in the last 12 years be our government made into a mess. | ||
| And we got a president now that is trying to straighten out this mess. | ||
| And he is so thankful that for this march that you're having, no kings, because he thought there was a king going to take his job. | ||
| And look, common sense. | ||
| This country has done away with common sense in the last 12 years. | ||
| And we're getting it back. | ||
| And all these people that are protesting and doing all this wasting time and wasting money are the leftovers of the November 6th election. | ||
| President Trump won the election. | ||
| He is our president. | ||
| And he is doing the right things to get this country back on track. | ||
| All right, Ray, let's get a last comment from Maurice. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, thank you, caller. | |
| And the one good thing about elections is that we're able to organize our points of view and channel them in a very productive way. | ||
| And I would just say to the caller, like, absolutely, Donald Trump won the election. | ||
| Tens of millions of people had a different opinion. | ||
| I wouldn't call them leftovers. | ||
| I would call them your neighbors, citizens who continue to organize, continue to express themselves. | ||
| You know, again, the whole point of No Kings is that at least today in this country, power is diffuse. | ||
| And a presidential election, whatever direction it goes, doesn't necessarily end the debate. | ||
| The debate continues. | ||
| And all of those people who voted for Kamala Harris and all those people who didn't vote, like 90 million, they have a point of view. | ||
| And I think it's a wonderful thing that they're expressing their points of view in a productive way. | ||
| That's what democracy is. | ||
| Democracy is you agreeing with the president, me having a lot of disagreement with the president, and both of us being able to express that on C-SPAN, on an open line, without fear of any retribution. | ||
| That's what the folks organizing and millions of people who will be protesting and rallying today are doing. | ||
| Making sure that you could express yourself and I could express myself on this open line without fear of retribution. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And that is Maurice Mitchell, National Director of the Working Families Party. | ||
| You can find them at workingfamilies.org. | ||
| Thanks so much for joining us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was good to be with you. | |
| Just a reminder that we will have coverage of the No Kings rally that is happening in D.C. We'll have Senator Sanders is expected to speak and Senator Murphy of Connecticut are they're both expected to speak among others. | ||
| That kicks off at noon today Eastern time here on C-SPAN. | ||
| Well coming up later, the former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, John Herbst, now with the Atlantic Council, will discuss President Zelensky's White House visit and President Trump's discussion with Russian President Vladimir Putin this week. | ||
| But first, Washington Times online opinion editor Cheryl Chumley on today's No Kings rallies and other news of the day. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Have been watching C-SPAN Washington Journal for over 10 years now. | |
| This is a great format that C-SPAN offers. | ||
| You're doing a great job. | ||
| I enjoy hearing everybody's opinion. | ||
| I'm a huge C-SPAN fan. | ||
| I listen every morning on the way to work. | ||
| I think C-SPAN should be required viewing for all three branches of government. | ||
| First of all, if you say hello to C-SPAN and how you'll covered the hearings. | ||
| Thank you, everyone at C-SPAN, for allowing this interaction with everyday citizens. | ||
| It's an amazing show to get real opinions from real people. | ||
| Appreciate you guys' non-biased coverage. | ||
| I love politics, and I love C-SPAN because I get to hear all the voices. | ||
| You and C-SPAN show the truth. | ||
| Back to year-verse for C-SPAN. | ||
| It's the one essential news network. | ||
| And past president nominal. | ||
| Why are you doing this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is outrageous. | |
| This is a kangaroo corporate. | ||
| Fridays, C-SPAN presents a rare moment of unity. | ||
| Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins. | ||
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| Fridays at 7 and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
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| We just sold the film much to the firm to Paramount for more money than made in 10 years of practicing law. | ||
| After you heard that, how long after that did you quit the practice of law? | ||
| 15 minutes. | ||
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unidentified
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Watch America's Book Club with John Grisham, Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | |
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| Exploring the American story, watch American History TV every weekend and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org/slash history. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| We're joined now by Cheryl Chumley, online opinion editor for the Washington Times. | ||
| She also hosts a podcast called Bold and Blunt. | ||
| Cheryl, welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for having me. | ||
| Well, as you know, today is the No Kings rallies across the country and wondering what you think of that event. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, on one hand, you could say it's great to see American citizens exercising their First Amendment rights. | |
| I'm all for that. | ||
| I love to see people getting involved in culture, in politics, and speaking out, speaking on their minds. | ||
| But on the other hand, if you look at who is endorsing all these rallies, it's the far left, right? | ||
| It's the Communist Party, it's the Socialist Party, it's the Workers' Party, all under the same umbrella of communism and Marxism. | ||
| And we'll just see how peaceful they are by day's end. | ||
| And when you say that they're all organized by communists and socialists and Marxists, can you give an example of what you mean by those organizations being communists or Marxists? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that's their title, the Communist Party of America and the Democratic Socialists of America. | |
| And if you look at the organizers, they proclaim themselves as the name. | ||
| So, you know, it's not me just taking a guess that these are far leftists in America coming together to organize these protests. | ||
| It's that they have organized them. | ||
| And earlier this week, we had one of the organizing groups on the show. | ||
| This is the move on. | ||
| This is Joel Payne, and again, one of the participating groups in the No Kings rally. | ||
| I'm going to play a short clip and then have you respond to it. | ||
| Okay, Cheryl? | ||
| I think the theme to the No Kings Day of Action, just like it was in June, was for people to affirm with one voice in unison in America, we have no kings, not now, not ever. | ||
| And the impetus for it is the Trump administration overreach and abuse of power that millions of Americans are seeing. | ||
| A lot of our organizations that are involved are really feeling this through feedback from our members. | ||
| And those members want to create community in their communities. | ||
| They want to know that other people are seeing the same thing that they're seeing and also still believe in the America that they believe in. | ||
| Cheryl. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So my response to it first and foremost is, you know, that's speaking the obvious. | |
| We don't have kings in America. | ||
| So to call it no kings, that's just speaking the obvious. | ||
| So why are they calling it that? | ||
| Because they're trying to make it seem as if this administration, this president specifically, is behaving like a king. | ||
| And if you look at what the Donald Trump administration is doing, they are trying to instill law and order in our communities. | ||
| They are trying to bring peace and calm out of chaos that has been generated by Democrat controls, whether it's the previous administration or whether it's the Democrat-controlled communities. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This administration is saying we're done with the lawlessness. | |
| We're taking decided action to put a stop to it and bring about safety and security in communities. | ||
| And that's what the far left is rebelling against. | ||
| And Cheryl, when you mentioned lawlessness, so I just want to bring up the commutation of George Santos' sentence today. | ||
| He was released from prison at about 11 p.m. last night by President Trump. | ||
| What were your thoughts on that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, my thoughts were that if I were a Democrat, I'd be cheering this because he's the openly gay former congressional member for the Republican Party. | |
| So the left would seem to embrace that type of ideal. | ||
| And second off. | ||
| Sorry, the ideal of a Republican, the idea of a gay gay individual serving in politics. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's something that the Democrat Party should have embraced because that's something that they advocate for: the open service of LGBTQ members in Congress in politics. | |
| But he wasn't convicted of being LGBTQ. | ||
| He was convicted of fraud. | ||
| And I have a response. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm giving you my response. | |
| So, my first response was a quip in my own mind that, oh, Democrats ought to have embraced this guy in the first place because he was openly gay. | ||
| My second response goes to the actual commuting of his sentence. | ||
| And that's something that just broke. | ||
| I didn't look into all the details of why his sentence was commuted, but I do know that he was convicted of seven years and given a sentence of seven years for lying, I believe it was, and for fraud. | ||
| And the terms of his sentencing was what Republicans were concerned about, that he was put in isolation for very long periods of time, which seemed above and beyond what anyone else should be treated to in prison. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So that's my response. | |
| I want to ask you, Cheryl, since you are an Army vet, about your thoughts on Secretary of Defense Hegseth's policies regarding women in combat and their physical fitness requirements. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's not just women, it's men too. | |
| Same physical fitness requirements across the board. | ||
| And for 20 years now, I've been saying the same thing. | ||
| I did serve. | ||
| I was active Army. | ||
| And at the time when I went into basic and AIT advanced individual training, there were new policies put in place that, for instance, women could not be dropped on the pavement to do punitive push-ups because they might get their hands cut by the rocks on the pavement. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So it was things like that that I saw as concerning. | |
| On one hand, we were being told in the military that the military standards know no gender, that it's the same, they're equal standards, we're a fighting machine, and that's it. | ||
| And on the other hand, I noticed how very different the physical fitness standards were for women versus men. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I said when I first got out, I wrote a piece, a commentary piece saying that most GI Janes should go home. | |
| Because if you can't have the same standards in your military fighting force, if you have to lower them to allow certain people to serve, then that degrades the ability of your military force to do its core mission. | ||
| So when it comes to physical fitness standards, I am entirely in line with Secretary of War's Pete Hegseth's new policies. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If you can achieve and reach those physical fitness, it shouldn't matter whether you're male or female. | |
| But if you can't, then you're out. | ||
| And Cheryl Chumley is our guest today. | ||
| If you'd like to speak to her, you can. | ||
| Our lines are bipartisan. | ||
| Republicans are on 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can start calling in now. | ||
| Cheryl, sticking with the Defense Department, I want to ask you about Secretary Hegset's new policy on the press. | ||
| Here is on X. | ||
| He says: Pentagon access is a privilege, not a right. | ||
| So press no longer roams free. | ||
| Press must wear a visible badge. | ||
| Credentialed press no longer permitted to solicit criminal acts. | ||
| Done. | ||
| Pentagon now has the same rules as every U.S. military installation. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, so 90% of what the policy makes clear is common sense. | |
| The part that I had an issue with was having journalists, having media organizations sign a paper agreeing to abide these new policies. | ||
| And specifically, the area that I did not like was the notion that journalists agree to not solicit classified or sensitive information from sources. | ||
| And if they do, they could be deemed a security or safety threat. | ||
| And I thought that that was very broad language that really intrudes on the right of not just the press, but the individuals in America that the press represents to exercise their First Amendment, God-given freedoms. | ||
| Let's go to calls. | ||
| Let's talk to Cheryl, Democrat in Aloha, Oregon. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Go ahead, Sharon. | ||
| You're on the air with Cheryl Chumley. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, hi. | |
| Well, I just wanted to make a truthful comment about my own experience. | ||
| I've attended four No Kings rallies or four rallies starting in May. | ||
| Standing next to me were 10 other 70-year-old women, my friends and neighbors, my sister. | ||
| We spent the day before each rally going over the issues that we were concerned about and what we wanted to put on our handmade signs. | ||
| My brother-in-law stapled them together, and we stood and we sang Power to the People and we chanted, What does democracy look like? | ||
| This is what democracy looks like. | ||
| And I never received a penny, and nobody contacted me. | ||
| And nobody around me of the hundreds of people I've talked to at the last war received any money. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And none of us are in Antifa. | |
| And the average age at my rally at Tigard, Oregon, was around 60, 60, 70 years old. | ||
| And nobody wore a mask, and nobody did violence. | ||
| We sang it, and when people, some people went by in trucks and gave us a finger, we gave them the peace sign. | ||
| And Sharon, are you going out today as well? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I am. | |
| I'm going. | ||
| My sister is going to the Tigered One in the morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm going to go to the gym this time. | |
| And she's second attendee. | ||
| We attend two usually every time. | ||
| All right, Sharon. | ||
| Let's get a response from Cheryl. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I hope she has a peaceful rally. | |
| I hope she has a good time. | ||
| As I said, I'm all in favor for Americans going out and rallying and voicing their concerns with government. | ||
| That is a core American freedom. | ||
| But I did never say, I never said that these groups were paying activists. | ||
| I didn't say that. | ||
| I said that these communists and socialists and far-leftist groups were sponsoring these rallies. | ||
| And that's still not to say that everybody who goes out and attends and participates is a card-carrying member of the Communist Party. | ||
| But it is to say that we have to recognize the root, the foundation, the supporters of these organizations and who actually are organizing them and bringing them about. | ||
| Lawrence, a Republican in Illinois. | ||
| Good morning, Lawrence. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Cheryl and C-SPAN. | |
| Yeah, where to begin. | ||
| I had a couple comments for the previous guests, too, but the No Kings Rally basically is about 250 years too late. | ||
| If people knew history, I mean, that's why we broke away from the King of England. | ||
| So I don't understand. | ||
| I don't understand the Noah Kings rally, but whatever. | ||
| The other comment I wanted to make is my spouse of going on over 40 years, 41 years, I'm in my 70s, migrated here from a South American country. | ||
| She's Hispanic and black from a communist country in South America. | ||
| So I've lived in the Bay Area of San Francisco. | ||
| I grew up in Chicago. | ||
| I lived in, spent time in Bolivia, Peru. | ||
| I can't believe most of the racist and ridiculous comments are made mostly from Democrats. | ||
| The last comment I'd like to make was that working families didn't make any distinction either. | ||
| The previous gentleman, working family, you know, the person who's out digging a hole or working construction is from a working family. | ||
| And you know who else is from a working family? | ||
| The president of a company or the president of a bank. | ||
| Perfect example would be Donald Trump is from a working family. | ||
| Perfect working family that the Democrats loved him before he got into politics. | ||
| They all invited him to weddings and TV shows. | ||
| Oprah had him on. | ||
| Clinton had him at his daughter's wedding. | ||
| They loved him. | ||
| They loved the guy. | ||
| All right, let's get a response. | ||
| Go ahead, Cheryl. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What can I say? | |
| He's right. | ||
| Everything he said, I agree with. | ||
| And, you know, it just made me think when he made the comment that Democrats are the ones that make most of the racist comments and things like that. | ||
| I just wanted to elaborate on that. | ||
| When you look out at the No Kings rallies that are going forth today, take a look how many Hamas enablers are out there, how much anti-Semitism is flowing through and coursing under these rallies. | ||
| Because I'm pretty sure in some of these cities, at least, that there are going to be a lot of down with Israel, save the Palestinian people type protests. | ||
| I wonder your thoughts, Cheryl, on this the Republican, the young Republican chat that was reported by Politico and the response. | ||
| For instance, Vice President Vance, This Is the Hill, saying young Republicans chat, that's what kids do. | ||
| As you know, there was a lot of anti-Semitism, a lot of very hateful things on those chats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So just a quick response to that. | |
| It's horrible, right? | ||
| I mean, I think we can all agree that the comments were ugly and horrible. | ||
| But let's put this in proper context. | ||
| The report on the young Republicans came about because they're in my own state of Virginia here. | ||
| There was a lot of reporting on Jay Jones, who is running for Attorney General of Virginia, and the comments he made about fantasizing about murdering his political opponent and wishing to see his political opponent's wife's children die in her arms and a few other texts that came up that seemed alarming. | ||
| So then Politico did its due diligence reporting to find something from the other side to sort of distract from the discussions going forth about Jay Jones. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And what they came up with was these young Republicans, these kids who are not running for any political office. | |
| So they're not seeking a taxpayer-funded position. | ||
| And by the way, they were in a private chat group just doing, as Vice President JD Vance said, what stupid kids do, right? | ||
| So there's a big difference there. | ||
| And so when you ask my thoughts on these young Republicans' comments, ugly, divisive, don't support it, but not as bad as what's taking place in Virginia right now with Jay Jones and this guy seeking office with the fantasies he has and the hopes to become the highest law enforcement official in my state. | ||
| And I'll just show that for people just so that they know where that is. | ||
| I'll find it. | ||
| We'll go back to that. | ||
| Here's Julius in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Independent Line. | ||
| Go ahead, Julius. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| So I agree with the guests that I think No Kings is a very poor choice for a name. | ||
| I agree with a caller previously that said it's about 250 years too late. | ||
| So what I see in this country, and this is where I may disagree with the guest, is that I don't see that we have a left at all. | ||
| Functionally, we have two very corporate right parties that are very beneficial to the billionaire class. | ||
| And what we're missing is a labor movement, a functional left. | ||
| And a lot of what we're seeing in our politics is related to growing income inequality, not just here, but also globally. | ||
| So some of the issues would be that when we have legislation that passes, it always benefits wealthy people. | ||
| And very often there's a trickle or a sunset clause that's for the people, but it expires. | ||
| But the tax cuts for the rich stay. | ||
| And that's what's going on. | ||
| And then we have two parties, and we have all these pundits that come on to C-SPAN that engage in culture wars. | ||
| They bring up stuff that is just silly, childish, immature, not grown-up type conversation. | ||
| And then we fight about it, the people, and they create division. | ||
| And that's what's going on. | ||
| This lady's engaging in it. | ||
| All the guests engage in it on C-SPAN, and we don't have grown-up conversations. | ||
| And that's getting to be very dangerous because there is a growing, dangerous polarization in the country. | ||
| It would not surprise me if there was violence on both sides today and growing violence in the country. | ||
| And so what we need to do is we need to recognize that fascism, oligarchy, that's what's in charge of the government. | ||
| It is no longer a democracy, right? | ||
| And we have to reclaim government. | ||
| Now, the people marching the street, I love that you're marching. | ||
| I love protest, peaceful protests. | ||
| I would say that the most effective march that I have seen in my lifetime was actually January 6th. | ||
| I don't agree with a thing that those people were angry about and marching for. | ||
| I don't agree with the things that they were marching for, but they at least knew where the centers of power were. | ||
| No Kings has no clue. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Cheryl, your thoughts. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so that was a great caller. | |
| I could probably have a discussion with him for an hour or so, but just to try and address some of these points. | ||
| I think those are excellent points. | ||
| And let me just give an example of where Republicans have failed, because I agree. | ||
| We have two political parties who are battling against each other, mostly creating purposeful divisions among the people in America so they can, in their various political capabilities, swarm in and pretend to have the answer for the people. | ||
| I have said for the very, very longest time that the issue in America is not with Republicans or Democrats or pitting or voting one over the other. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was the loss of our individual freedoms in America. | |
| It was the loss of the concept of God-given individual rights. | ||
| And you've seen Republicans exploit open borders for their own business purposes. | ||
| You've seen Democrats exploit open borders for their own voting interests and for their own agendas. | ||
| So that's just one example of what that caller was saying, that these political parties aren't working for us as individuals. | ||
| And what we need as a nation is to recapture that spirit of America, that God-given individual right and freedom, which is the American exceptionalism that keeps America above and beyond any other nation in the world. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And part of the problem is we're not teaching civics. | |
| We're not teaching proper history in school. | ||
| We're degrading the economy to the point where we have young people clamoring for socialism because they can't make it on their own in a free market. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So it's a cyclical thing that's taking place in America, degrading our greatness. | |
| And I see the core foundation is the loss of that individualism, that loss of the concept of God-given rights. | ||
| All right, and just to go back to what we were talking about, Politico, quote, I love Hitler. | ||
| Leaked messages expose young Republicans' racist chat. | ||
| Thousands of private messages reveal young GOP leaders joking about gas chambers, slavery, and rape. | ||
| That's at Politico if you want to read that. | ||
| And then Cheryl's comment: this is Fox News. | ||
| Top Dem leaders refused to call on disgraced AG nominee to drop out of Virginia Race. | ||
| That is Jay Jones, who was running for Attorney General in Virginia. | ||
| He said he was, quote, ashamed and embarrassed of the surface text messages from 2022. | ||
| That's at Fox News to find out more about that. | ||
| And here's it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know what? | |
| That was very clever what you just did there, right? | ||
| Because you come out and you read, you attribute these ugly arguments to GOP leaders, right? | ||
| They're kids. | ||
| They're young Republicans. | ||
| They don't hold public office. | ||
| They're not seeking public office. | ||
| They're not tax paid. | ||
| And then you talk about Fox News and say my comment was aligned with Fox News that Jay Jones has apologized. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, read Jay Jones's text. | |
| You know, read that for the callers in the. | ||
| So, Cheryl, I am simply reading the headlines of Politico, and I'm encouraging our audience to go and read it for themselves. | ||
| I am not commenting on this at all. | ||
| Here's Nancy Cedar Falls, Iowa Democrat. | ||
| Go ahead, Nancy. | ||
| You're on with Cheryl Chumley. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, Cheryl and Greta. | |
| My statement is really... | ||
| That's okay. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| My statement is really pretty simple. | ||
| I don't need to lower myself to the level of those that say we hate, such as the man that said this is a hate rally rather than a no kings rally. | ||
| We can love them sad by not being hypocritical. | ||
| I don't point fingers. | ||
| Instead, I use polite verbiage using I statements. | ||
| My signs say, please, no kings. | ||
| And my other side says, actually, I love America. | ||
| I don't know anyone that gets paid to protest, whatever they are using their First Amendment rights to protest. | ||
| Cheryl. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm glad that she has a good experience with the protests and rallies. | |
| And once again, I would like to say that I never raised any issue about paid protesters. | ||
| But since it's been brought up twice now by callers, I do know from my years and years covering local governments for local community newspapers that there were leftist organizations that did pay people to attend zoning board meetings, board of supervisor meetings, city council meetings. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They paid for them to attend and to present viewpoints to the boards, pretending as if they were speaking for the citizens of the community. | |
| So if it happens on the local level, then chances are pretty good it's happening on the federal level, on the national level. | ||
| And we do have evidence of some organizations funding some of these protests. | ||
| Just for the record, again, I never did say that these no kings protests were being funded by anybody. | ||
| And one more call. | ||
| Dave in Dana Point, California, Republican. | ||
| Good morning, Dave. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Basically, number one, I'm not a Republican. | ||
| I'm a Trump again. | ||
| I go by what Leo Terrell says. | ||
| I was never in the, I'm 58 years old. | ||
| I was never in politics prior to 2016. | ||
| Trump basically brought me into it. | ||
| What I have is a question that I want to ask, but give you my answer first to the question, and then you answer it. | ||
| My question is, why don't you think the liberals and the Democrats get this stuff? | ||
| For instance, I believe that they're being brainwashed through their smartphones. | ||
| I believe they're being brainwashed through all the liberal media that's on TV and everywhere else. | ||
| I believe they're being brainwashed through our school systems. | ||
| I have a bunch of friends who are teachers. | ||
| They all, when it dropped down from college into the high school, because they were all high school teachers, they couldn't stand it. | ||
| So they dropped down to junior high. | ||
| Then it dropped down into that. | ||
| So they couldn't stand that. | ||
| So then they dropped down into elementary school, and now it's reached in there. | ||
| They're getting ready to retire because, like I said, I'm 58. | ||
| They're all 58. | ||
| So, Dave, we're running out of time. | ||
| Can you make a real quick point? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Again, all the stuff that the Liberal Democrats are for hurt our women and children. | ||
| Open borders, drugs. | ||
| Okay, let's get Cheryl to respond to that. | ||
| Go ahead, Cheryl. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it is an interesting question, and I know we're running out of time. | |
| So let me just say, I think the Democrat Party has gone through a dramatic change since Bill Clinton years. | ||
| It happened under Barack Obama, really sped up for his eight years. | ||
| Under Joe Biden, things got worse. | ||
| And I think the Democrat Party has been infiltrated by and corrupted by the far left, such as the Democratic Socialists of America, communists, and Marxists. | ||
| And I think that's why you're getting this big political divide. | ||
| It's not about for America. | ||
| It's for the parties. | ||
| And the Democrat Party is not the Democrat Party of JFK or even Bill Clinton days. | ||
| All right, that's Cheryl Chumley, online opinion editor at the Washington Times, also a host of the podcast called Bold and Blunt. | ||
| Cheryl, thanks so much for joining us today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Coming up next, Atlantic Council's John Herbst, a former ambassador to Ukraine, will discuss the current war between that country and Russia. | ||
| That's coming up right after the break. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And past president, why are you doing this? | |
| This is outrageous. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is a kangaroo quarrel. | |
| 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 aisle into a dialogue. | ||
| Ceasefire on the network that doesn't take sides. | ||
| Fridays at 7 and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| American History TV, exploring the people and events that tell the American story. | ||
| This weekend, as the nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, join American History TV for our series, America 250, and discover the ideas and defining moments of the American story. | ||
| This week, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps mark their 250th anniversary with celebrations throughout the city of Philadelphia. | ||
| On Lectures in History, Gettysburg College professor Timothy Shannon chronicles the colonists who settled on Roanoke Island off the coast of North Carolina in 1587, only to mysteriously disappear soon after on the presidency. | ||
| On the 35th anniversary is of Desert Shield and Desert Storm, the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum looks at the 1990 diplomatic efforts in the Persian Gulf and the successful war coalition led the following year by President George H.W. Bush. | ||
| Exploring the American story, watch American History TV every weekend and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org/slash history. | ||
| This Sunday, watch the premiere of C-SPAN's bold new original series, America's Book Club, with our guest, John Grisham, former politician, lawyer, and best-selling author, whose books, including A Time to Kill, The Firm, and The Pelican Brief. | ||
| He joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein. | ||
| We just sold a film watch to the firm to Paramount for more money than made in 10 years of Praxim Law. | ||
| After you heard that, how long after that did you quit the practice of law? | ||
| 15 minutes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Watch America's Book Club with John Grisham, Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | |
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| We're talking now about the future of the Ukraine-Russia war with John Herbst. | ||
| He was former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine under the George W. Bush administration, currently senior director at the Atlantic Council Eurasia Center. | ||
| Welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
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My pleasure to be here. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| So a lot has been happening on this front. | ||
| On the war between Russia and Ukraine, the president hosted President Zelensky in the Oval Office. | ||
| He had talked with Putin on the phone for two hours. | ||
| And President Trump has announced another summit with Russia. | ||
| So what are you making of all this news? | ||
|
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To briefly describe it, President Trump has been threatening since May to bring major pressure on Putin because Putin is blocking Trump's own proposals for peace. | |
| And three times he seemed to be on the verge of doing something strong. | ||
| And three times he paused and pivoted because Putin reached out to him and suggested, you know, instead of measures, let's have a negotiation. | ||
| That happened in May. | ||
| It happened most famously in August. | ||
| And it appears to be happening right now. | ||
| You mentioned the August summit that happened in Alaska. | ||
| We, of course, remember the warmth between the two leaders and the red carpet. | ||
| The United States didn't get anything out of that. | ||
|
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That's correct. | |
| That's correct. | ||
| Do you feel like it's a mistake to offer Putin another summit with the president? | ||
|
unidentified
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I will be a little bit cautious in responding. | |
| I think that if President Trump wants to achieve his stated goal of a durable end to the war between Russia and Ukraine, he needs to put major pressure on the Kremlin. | ||
| He has been talking about this very clearly since May, but he's been reluctant to do so. | ||
| What does major pressure on the Kremlin look like? | ||
|
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It means significant arms to Ukraine, which the Europeans and the Ukrainians can pay for, that will make it hard, much harder for Russia to make any gains whatsoever, and significant economic pressure. | |
| That's what's within play. | ||
| And since Trump and Zelensky met in New York City about four weeks ago, Trump's been talking very seriously about major pressure, including the provision of our cruise missiles, the tomahawks, to Ukraine. | ||
| But then I think Putin got very nervous in the last week, which is why you had that phone call a few days ago between Putin and Trump. | ||
| Because of the tomahawks? | ||
|
unidentified
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Tomahawks in particular, but in general, serious pressure coming from the United States. | |
| And as happened in August, Trump said, okay, let's see if we can get you to agree to do the right thing without major pressure. | ||
| And so that's where we are, and that's why we haven't seen any progress. | ||
| Trump had a triumph in the Middle East. | ||
| I worked 15 years of my career in the State Department on Arab-Israeli affairs. | ||
| What he did was remarkable. | ||
| But the way he got it done, he said at Sharm el-Sheikh, he said, if I had not bombed Iran, this wouldn't happen. | ||
| So with Russia, he's not going to bomb Russia, but he needs to use the same concept of serious pressure, that he's not going to let Russia get away with this war of aggression. | ||
| And he's yet to use that pressure. | ||
| You said you think that Putin got nervous from the pressure. | ||
| What is it about the tomahawks that you think caused Putin to be so worried and to reach out and have that two-hour conversation? | ||
|
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This is not a miracle weapon. | |
| If we were to give Ukraine tomahawks tomorrow, which I believe we should in our own interest, it's not going to end the war. | ||
| But it would tell Putin that American support for Ukraine on the battlefield is real. | ||
| That your hope, Mr. Putin, that the United States will simply ignore this war and allow you to do whatever you want is not going to happen. | ||
| That's the importance of tomahawks. | ||
| It also gives the Ukrainians the ability to very precisely target targets in Moscow. | ||
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Well, the Ukrainians can do that now. | |
| Moscow, with their extraordinary drones, and they're also developing missiles. | ||
| Their drones can travel as much as 600 or 700 miles, and Moscow is less than that. | ||
| But there are places which they cannot hit with their drones. | ||
| They're in Tatarstan, which is about 1,000 miles from the Ukrainian border. | ||
| You have a major drone factory. | ||
| With cruised missiles, with tomahawks, we could take that out. | ||
| Ukrainians can take that out. | ||
| And those drones are causing havoc, murdering civilians, destroying cities right away. | ||
| So this would be a clear advantage for Ukraine. | ||
| But that's not going to end the war. | ||
| It just would make that much harder. | ||
| And that's the sort of thing we need to see. | ||
| Trump says he's for peace through strength. | ||
| And I believe him. | ||
| He applied that in the Middle East. | ||
| But so far with Russia, all we've seen is peace through bluster. | ||
| And bluster is not going to cut it. | ||
| Because Putin needs to see strong actions. | ||
| Former Ambassador John Herps is in the studio with us. | ||
| He was U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine during the George W. Bush administration. | ||
| If you'd like to talk to him, you can do so. | ||
| Call us right now on our lines. | ||
| Republicans are on 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| I want to ask you about economic pressure because sanctions on Russia have gone back since the beginning of this war over two years ago. | ||
| What more can be done on Russia's economy to get them to the point where it is real? | ||
|
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I think sanctions have already been effective. | |
| Just they have not been able to do something they were never designed to do, which was to force Putin to give up his dreams of conquering Ukraine. | ||
| They've just made it harder. | ||
| And we could ratch this up further, first by going after the ghost fleet of tankers, which are not licensed to carry oil or natural gas, liquefied natural gas, to make it almost impossible to use them because Russia has gotten around sanctions by use of these tankers. | ||
| Two, there are some Russian banks, financial institutions, which have not been sanctioned. | ||
| And so, yes, we've sanctioned 75 or 80 percent, but those 20 or 25 percent of their financial institutions are doing virtually everything they need to finance their war. | ||
| So we could go after those. | ||
| We can also put serious pressure, and Trump has begun to do this to his credit, on countries that are buying Russian oil. | ||
| So right now, it looks like India has finally decided to stop purchasing Russian oil under the pressure coming from the White House. | ||
| So I credit the president for that. | ||
| But those three things together, and finally, making sure that advanced Western components, which are being sold to Russia through third or fourth, four parties in between, that that trade ceases. | ||
| Because Russian weapons are full of Western components. | ||
| We had a caller in the morning who had a question for you. | ||
| Seeing from his perspective, he sees that Russia only invaded Ukraine because of fears that Ukraine would join NATO and the EU. | ||
| If we were, the U.S. and the Europeans were to state unequivocally that Ukraine will not join NATO or the EU, would that put an end to Putin's ambitions for Ukraine? | ||
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Well, Russia had no objection to Ukraine joining the EU until 2013. | |
| When I was working in ambassador in Kiev from 2003 to 2006, the Russian position was no NATO for Ukraine, but Pajall, I mean, okay, on the EU. | ||
| So this is a new condition. | ||
| Ukraine was not on the verge of joining NATO in 2014. | ||
| That's a Russian talking point, but it's completely false. | ||
| George Bush, President George Bush Jr., tried to get Ukraine a pass into NATO in 2008, and he failed miserably. | ||
| And as a consequence, as a SOP to Bush, President Bush, everyone said, okay, Ukraine can all join NATO at some point. | ||
| But Ukraine, at that point, that was in 2008, down to the Russian big invasion in 2022, or their smaller aggression in 2014, was never close to joining NATO. | ||
| So that's a Russian talking point, which people who don't know anything about this issue believe. | ||
| Here is Marissa in Miami, Florida, line for Democrats. | ||
| You're on with former Ambassador John Herbst. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hello, can you hear me? | |
| Yes, go right ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you so much. | |
| Hi, John Herbst. | ||
| How are you doing this morning? | ||
| I'm fine. | ||
| How are you? | ||
| Here is George in New Jersey, Republican line. | ||
| Go ahead, George. | ||
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Yesterday, I think I heard Trump saying about like they should draw the lines right where they are right now and like Russia have whatever property they gained with this war and Ukraine give it up to them. | |
| They shouldn't do that because a couple years from now he's just going to go again and then he claims he's going to use nuclear weapons, which I don't think he will. | ||
| But, you know, what's he going to do? | ||
| Threaten every four or five years when he goes into, you know, Poland next, you know, and give stuff up. | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| We should give everything Ukraine needs to just keep this going on. | ||
| If you remember Afghanistan, that's what brought down Russia is when we started helping Afghanistan and they dumped everything in there and that's what happened. | ||
| And real quick for your last guest you had, it makes me laugh when people talk about Trump being a law and order president as long as it don't have anything to do with him. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I agree with the logic of your position. | ||
| Putin's geopolitical objectives are to weaken the United States, to weaken NATO, and so he wants to go beyond Ukraine. | ||
| And if we allow him to win in Ukraine, we will face a problem defending our Baltic allies or our Polish allies or our Romanian allies. | ||
| So it is in our interest to make sure that Putin loses in Ukraine. | ||
| Trump's view is that you could have a durable peace based upon the current lines. | ||
| And that's not false. | ||
| If we were to agree to that, and Zelensky has said in response to Trump's own proposals, he's willing to accept that. | ||
| If we would agree to that, but at the same time, arm Ukraine to the teeth, provide Ukraine with serious security guarantees, that would meet our interests. | ||
| And while that would be unfortunate for Ukrainians living under brutal Russian occupation, for Ukraine as a country to survive and to prosper, that is possible. | ||
| Let's talk to Steve. | ||
| Brilliant Wisconsin Independent Line. | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah, I think he got it kind of skewed there. | |
| Putin, apparently, is you don't have to be a member of the War College to figure this one out. | ||
| Putin's main objective is to reconstitute the old Soviet Union, and he's going after Ukraine right now to do that. | ||
| And the only way this is going to come to an end is if we give Ukraine the weapons platforms and munitions to reach out and take out the supply depots, the training areas, the manufacturing operations that are supplying the war effort that Russia and Putin are using to try and take over Ukraine. | ||
| If you take a look at the history, Ukraine, at the dissolution of the Soviet Union, they had nuclear weapons. | ||
| They gave them up with the supposed guarantee that their borders would be sovereign and sagro-sanct. | ||
| So much for that promise. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I agree with everything you said. | ||
| And implicit in what I said before you came on, I said Putin wants to go beyond Ukraine. | ||
| So you and I have a very similar concept. | ||
| And we agree on what American policy and Western policy should be, to give Ukraine the means to make sure Putin loses this war. | ||
| But one way Putin could lose the war, not my preference, but this seems to be the objective of the man the American people elected, President of the United States, is to have the war end roughly along the current military lines. | ||
| And that could serve our interests. | ||
| It could also serve Ukrainian interests. | ||
| It's not, in my judgment, the best outcome, but it's not a bad outcome. | ||
| But that requires exactly the things you've said. | ||
| Major weapons to Ukraine, economic assistance, if not from the United States, then from Europe. | ||
| These things and major economic pressure on the Kremlin. | ||
| These should all be parts of our policy. | ||
| President Trump talks about these things. | ||
| He needs to now implement them. | ||
| Have you ever met Vladimir Putin? | ||
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unidentified
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No, but I've paid a lot of attention to him. | |
| Do you think Putin is ready to make peace right now? | ||
|
unidentified
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No. | |
| Putin's goal is to have political control of Ukraine. | ||
| Now, that can be defined in a number of ways, but at a minimum means the government in Kiev does not take any step on national security policy without Putin or the Kremlin's approval. | ||
| It probably also means taking a good bit more Ukrainian territory. | ||
| Here is Michael in Bangor, Maine. | ||
| Republican. | ||
| Hi, Michael. | ||
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unidentified
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Hi, good morning. | |
| How are you doing, John? | ||
| How are you doing, Mimi? | ||
| Good. | ||
| Good, good. | ||
| So my question is: I know this has been going on since February of 2022. | ||
| I just want to know if, in your opinion, you think this is a winnable war without diplomacy. | ||
| I mean, we've had these talks with President Trump. | ||
| This has been going on for years. | ||
| Prior to President Trump, it was going on with President Biden. | ||
| So I'm indifferent to both. | ||
| I'm not extremely political or anything. | ||
| I just want to see this war ended. | ||
| John, I would like to know if you think this, in any sense, could be ended without diplomacy. | ||
| God forbid that falls through. | ||
| Do you think even with our help, Ukraine is capable of kicking Russia out of the territory that they've already conquered, et cetera, et cetera? | ||
| I'd like to know. | ||
| Oh, come. | ||
| I don't have any doubt that a good ending to this war is possible if American policy is strong and wise and ditto with European policy. | ||
| Russia, right now, under Putin is trying to literally erase Ukrainians' identities as Ukrainians, which is why occupied Ukraine is a horrific area. | ||
| Brutal repression. | ||
| That is Putin's objective. | ||
| Ukrainians, therefore, are fighting for their freedom and their existence as a separate people from Russians. | ||
| And they'll fight till the end. | ||
| And they're a large country. | ||
| They are fighting with not just great courage, but brilliance. | ||
| Their innovations on drones, other weapons, everything relating to technology applied to a modern battlefield has been first rate. | ||
| If we give them all the support they need, if Biden had given Ukraine all the support it needed for the counteroffensive of 2023, they would have taken back a lot of territory. | ||
| But Biden was intimidated by Putin's nuclear threats. | ||
| Today, it would be harder to do that. | ||
| But again, if we armed Ukraine appropriately, they could take back a good bit of their country. | ||
| Whether they could take back all of it, I don't know. | ||
| But this is how the war could end in a way which meets American interests and meets basic Ukrainian needs. | ||
| And that is to both arm Ukraine to defeat Putin on the battlefield, at least to push him back some, and take serious economic steps to reduce the productivity of the Russian economy. | ||
| Big-time sanctions. | ||
| That happens. | ||
| This war will end. | ||
| It will probably require some diplomacy at the end, but only when Putin realizes his economy is tanking and he cannot win this war on the battlefield. | ||
| On the line for Democrats in Lawton, Oklahoma, Clyde, you're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, good morning. | |
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you all for taking my call. | |
| Now to me, Zelensky is the tip of the sword for the Lord Jesus Christ. | ||
| And hey, he ain't all. | ||
| So people hanging there, Lord Jesus Christ is still sitting on the throne. | ||
| God bless y'all. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And here is John in Mechanicsville, New York, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hi, Mimi. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I'm 78 years old, and I can remember back during the days of Vietnam when we were fighting over there. | ||
| Russia and China were supplying the North Vietnamese with all kinds of offensive and defensive weapons. | ||
| So the point I'm making is I don't think we should have any qualms about giving Ukraine what they need. | ||
| And it seems everybody's on the same page. | ||
| You know, that war lasted for 10 years, and this war is an ongoing war. | ||
| And I agree with your guests. | ||
| I don't think anything's going to happen until either economic sanctions kick in or military wins by the Ukraine turn to look like a decisive victory. | ||
| Also, I think that wars like this, whether it's the war in the Mideast with Moss or the war with the Irish IRA against the British, they have to run their course. | ||
| When the bloodlighting gets to a point where too many people have died, there's been no hope for a resolution. | ||
| I think then finally people come to their senses, and then you have a negotiated peace. | ||
| All right, let's get a response. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay, I agree with your logic, sir. | |
| Again, we have every right to arm Ukraine because Putin is our adversary. | ||
| He wants to weaken the United States. | ||
| And if he wins in Ukraine, that's a loss for us. | ||
| And it will be a loss for President Trump. | ||
| It's now his war. | ||
| So we have every right to do it. | ||
| It's in our national interest. | ||
| And Ukraine has the means to turn the tide on the Kremlin if he gets the support he needs, it needs from us and from our European allies. | ||
| I want to go back since you did mention that you had worked on the Arab-Israeli issue in the State Department. | ||
| So I want to ask you, part of President Trump's peace plan is that Hamas disarms and gives up their weapons. | ||
| Do you think that that's going to happen? | ||
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unidentified
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I doubt that will happen. | |
| I think that Netanyahu's objective, which he announced right after that horrible massacre on October 7, to get rid of Hamas, make sure they have no control in Gaza, was unrealistic. | ||
| Now, limiting its power, yes, that's happened. | ||
| But I'd be surprised if they could ultimately disarm Hamas. | ||
| What we're seeing right now is bloodshed in Gaza as Hamas is going after every possible rival. | ||
| So does this whole thing fall apart because Hamas won't give up power and won't disarm? | ||
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unidentified
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Well, I think that Hamas is in a big box. | |
| And I think given the strength of the Israeli defense forces, the support that Israel gets from the United States, they're not going to be able to get out of that box. | ||
| Oh, also, and very important, you have to credit Trump on this too, the way he's brought in Arab countries to put pressure on Hamas is how you get this deal. | ||
| So as long as they are willing, if they are willing to actually turn off the spigot, so Hamas gets no financial support from them, Hamas may not quite give up its weapons, but we may not see those weapons much because they'll keep them out of sight and they won't be able to use them in a way that's dangerous at least to Israelis, although perhaps dangerous to fellow Gazans, unfortunately. | ||
| All right, well, back to the Ukraine ward. | ||
| This is Ronald in Michigan. | ||
| Democrat, good morning, Ronald. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| I'd like to ask John, doesn't America have a Monroe doctrine where they would not let anybody set up a base in our hemisphere? | ||
| That's why we almost went to war with Cuba. | ||
| We have a Monroe doctrine. | ||
| Don't they think Putin has a Monroe doctrine to where now he's got an 800-mile border with Finland? | ||
| We're right on his border right now, NATO. | ||
| So what more do we want? | ||
| Well, I understand the logic of your question. | ||
| And certainly, Russia has interests in countries near its borders. | ||
| But I would turn around what you said and ask you the question. | ||
| Does that interest give them the right to dictate the governments that are in power on their borders? | ||
| Now, in response to another caller's question, I pointed out the notion that Ukraine was going to join NATO is simply non-factual. | ||
| I've worked a lot on the NATO-Ukraine issue over the years, and I know that the supposed statement by NATO at the 2008 summit in Bucharest, which Putin talks about all the time, was, again, a SOP to President Bush because France and Germany prevented offering Ukraine something called the membership action plan, which is a large step towards joining NATO. | ||
| So Ukraine was never about to join NATO. | ||
| And you just referred to Finland. | ||
| Finland was a proud neutral country for decades. | ||
| Finland decided it needed to join NATO after Russia launched this huge invasion of Ukraine in 2022. | ||
| So Finland and Sweden would not be in NATO were it not for Putin's war of aggression against Ukraine, which he exacerbated or escalated in 2022. | ||
| Dave, Independent, Long Island, New York. | ||
| Good morning, Dave. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hey, good morning. | |
| So much. | ||
| I guess the one thing I want to talk about the tomahawks, really, but I just want to go quick over the, like you said, the Ukrainians would never accept Russia. | ||
| But you're talking about the West of Ukraine, because really a big part of, remember there was a civil war, right? | ||
| And a big part of Ukraine over there in the Donbass and Kherson, even Odessa, very Russian kind of people over there. | ||
| I don't think Russia would really have too much problems taking that over. | ||
| The West, yes. | ||
| That's where the Banderites and all that kind of people are. | ||
| That would be a lot harder. | ||
| But anyway, back to the Tomahawks. | ||
| The issue, right, with the Tomahawks is that they're dual use. | ||
| So you can put your conventional weapons on it, but they also come traditionally, I think that's how they were designed, was to carry a nuclear weapon. | ||
| So now what you're doing is you're kind of putting Russia into, you're backing them into a corner with a weapon that could have a nuclear warhead on it. | ||
| So you're going to fire. | ||
| And on top of it, even worse, is that Ukraine doesn't need either the technology or the ability to fire a tomahawk weapon. | ||
| So you need Western people. | ||
| You need somebody from NATO or you need American troops to actually use to fire the Tomahawk. | ||
| And now Russia is looking at a missile coming over its border. | ||
| Is it a nuclear bomb or is it not a nuclear bomb? | ||
| That's the extremes that lunatics in NATO are going to because they're in a panic because they thought Russia was going to collapse under sanctions. | ||
| They thought Russia is going to collapse being kicked out of SWIP. | ||
| And the opposite happened. | ||
| All right, Dave. | ||
| Dave, you have a lot of information, but it comes largely from Kremlin sources. | ||
| But so let me go down piece by piece. | ||
| First of all, if you're right that there were a fair number of ethnic Russians and a majority of Russian language speakers in eastern Ukraine and in Odessa. | ||
| That's all true. | ||
| And before Moscow launched its war on Ukraine in 2014, they had a favorable view of Moscow. | ||
| But once Moscow launched that war, when it seized Crimea, most of those people objected to Russians coming into their territory. | ||
| And most of the fighting against Russian forces, there was no civil war in Ukraine. | ||
| It was a Russian-led insurgency in eastern Ukraine, followed by a Russian invasion. | ||
| Most of the fighting against those Russian forces were by ethnic Russians and Russian speakers from Donbask, from Luhansk, and in Odessa. | ||
| Putin thought the Ukrainian people would greet him, including this Russian element of the Ukrainian people, with flowers and candies. | ||
| They greeted him with Kalashnikovs and hand grenades. | ||
| So your basic concept is wrong. | ||
| Now, as for cruise missiles, Ukraine, you're right, cruise missiles, actually, you didn't say this, but cruise missiles are almost always launched from ships. | ||
| And Ukraine does not have a navy, although they've driven the Russian Black Sea Fleet out of the Black Sea with their drones. | ||
| But Ukrainians are remarkably innovative. | ||
| And they would find a way to launch tomahawks from land. | ||
| Now, as for cruise missiles, they are cruise missiles. | ||
| Yes, they are nuclear capable. | ||
| But if they're coming from Ukraine, Ukraine has no nukes. | ||
| Ukraine gave up its nukes in exchange for guarantees of its sovereignty in its territory. | ||
| So they don't have nukes. | ||
| And Ukraine does not need Americans or NATO soldiers to launch commahawks. | ||
| They are extraordinarily sophisticated. | ||
| Peter. | ||
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unidentified
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Oh, sorry. | |
| So you need to get facts from other than Kremlin channels to understand what's going on. | ||
| On the Republican line in Middletown, New York, Peter, you're on with former Ambassador John Hearst. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hello, good morning. | |
| Thank you so much for taking my call. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Mr. Ambassador, at the beginning, you mentioned that this is the third time that President Trump sort of softened up his stance. | ||
| And I'm just wondering if you think that it's more because of Putin's sweet talking, or is it more from the anti-Ukraine factor in his inner circle? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I think that those are two elements that play a role here. | ||
| There are people in the Trump world who don't understand that Moscow considers the United States to be its principal adversary. | ||
| And that's just a failure of judgment. | ||
| But it's also true that Trump prides himself on having a good relationship with Putin, having a good relationship with Xi for that matter. | ||
| And so Putin has the ability to charm people. | ||
| That's what a KGB officer learns, how to read people psychologically and how to charm them. | ||
| So Putin's pretty good at that. | ||
| But look, I don't think Trump is a dunce. | ||
| He even said after the meeting with Zelensky, yes, perhaps he is being played. | ||
| And he said that before. | ||
| But the fact that he acknowledges that means he realized he needs to take this into account. | ||
| And I have a lot of colleagues who think that Trump is simply going to allow Putin to do whatever he wants in Ukraine. | ||
| I disagree. | ||
| I think Trump really wants a durable peace. | ||
| I think he really does not want to be played in the final accounting by Putin. | ||
| And at some point, to achieve his goal of a durable peace, he's going to have to put serious pressure on the Kremlin. | ||
| I just don't know when that's going to happen. | ||
| Let's talk to Jim Parsons, West Virginia, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Jim. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| And thank you, Ambassador Error, for pointing out some facts for people. | ||
| I think it's a very strange, bizarre scenario, this mindset that seems to exist with a lot of folks in the Republican Party. | ||
| And you mentioned it a few moments ago, part of the inner circle that doesn't seem to perceive that Russia is an adversary. | ||
| And it's not necessarily by choice, just the way things are down through history. | ||
| But earlier you mentioned too, and I'd like you to clarify for people that I thought that about approximately $61 billion with a B in military aid that the Biden administration wanted to release to Ukraine back in, | ||
| I'm thinking it was October 2023, it was held up for seven months in the House of Representatives by Republicans from October 23, I've been thinking around to around April, spring of 2024, Republicans were holding up very vital, critical aid to Ukraine. | ||
| And they postured that, well, we need to look out for America on our southern border and blah, blah, blah. | ||
| And that was like seven months that Ukraine was not being given U.S. military assistance. | ||
| And I think this support by some Republicans for Russia is because quite obviously Russia was helping elect Trump in 2016. | ||
| All right, Jim, let's get an answer. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay, I don't want to go back to 2016. | |
| And there are people who complain rightly about a Russia hoax, so I don't want to get into that. | ||
| But regarding the holdup of aid, you're right, that was a serious geopolitical mistake, which you can attribute to one of the two parties. | ||
| But it's also true that that aid was finally voted on because Trump gave the okay to Speaker Johnson to move on it. | ||
| And this is something I point out to my colleagues who think that Trump simply wants to let Putin do whatever he wants with Russia. | ||
| And Trump said in April of 24 that Ukraine's survival was important to the United States. | ||
| And that he developed this concept for peace, a durable peace based upon the current lines. | ||
| Again, I've already said that's not my preference, but it's not a terrible outcome for American interest or for Ukraine. | ||
| We just haven't seen the strong, the peace-through-strength policy that Trump demonstrated in the Middle East. | ||
| We haven't seen him apply that yet to this war. | ||
| And I believe at some point he's going to have to, if for no other reasons, for his own reputation as a strong statesman. | ||
| All right, that is former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst, also senior director at the Atlantic Council Eurasia Center. | ||
| Thanks so much for joining us today. | ||
| And we will finish up our program with Open Forum. | ||
| You can give us a call right now. | ||
| The lines are Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| It's 202-748-8000 for Democrats and 202-748-8002 for Independents. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
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American History TV, exploring the people and events that tell the American story. | |
| This weekend, as the nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, join American History TV for our series, America 250, and discover the ideas and defining moments of the American story. | ||
| This week, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps mark their 250th anniversary with celebrations throughout the city of Philadelphia. | ||
| On Lectures in History, Gettysburg College professor Timothy Shannon chronicles the colonists who settled on Roanoke Island off the coast of North Carolina in 1587, only to mysteriously disappear soon after on the presidency. | ||
| On the 35th anniversary is of Desert Shield and Desert Storm, the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum looks at the 1990 diplomatic efforts in the Persian Gulf and the successful war coalition led the following year by President George H.W. Bush. | ||
| Exploring the American story, watch American History TV every weekend and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org slash history. | ||
| This fall, C-SPAN invites you on a powerful journey through the stories that define a nation. | ||
| From the halls of our nation's most iconic libraries comes America's Book Club, a bold, original series where ideas, history, and democracy meet. | ||
| Hosted by renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein, each week features in-depth conversations with the thinkers shaping our national story. | ||
| Among this season's remarkable guests, John Grisham, master storyteller of the American justice system. | ||
| Justice Amy Coney Barrett, exploring the Constitution, the court, and the role of law in American life. | ||
| Famed chef and global relief entrepreneur Jose Andres, reimagining food. | ||
| Henry Louis Gates, chronicler of race, identity, and the American experience. | ||
| The books, the voices, the places that preserve our past and spark the ideas that will shape our future. | ||
| America's Book Club, premiering this fall, Sundays at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| It is open forum and looking forward to taking your calls on whatever's on your mind. | ||
| Earlier this week, former National Security Advisor John Bolton was indicted for mishandling classified documents and classified information. | ||
| Here is President Trump reacting to that indictment. | ||
| I didn't know that. | ||
| You tell me for the first time, but I think he's, you know, a bad person. | ||
| I think he's a bad guy. | ||
| Yeah, he's a bad guy. | ||
| It's too bad. | ||
|
unidentified
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But that's the way it goes, right? | |
| That's the way it goes. | ||
| Well, I what? | ||
| Have you reviewed the case against him? | ||
| No, I haven't. | ||
| I haven't. | ||
| But I just think he's a bad person. | ||
| And, of course, former National Security Advisor John Bolton has pleaded not guilty in court. | ||
| And we will go to the calls now to Matt Poolsville, Maryland Independent. | ||
| Hi, Matt. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Morning. | ||
| I was waiting to get on with the former caller, but I'll frame it this way. | ||
| Donald Trump, as a malignant narcissist and sociopath, is driven by grift, grievance, and his own personal protection. | ||
| And so the idea that national interest or what's good for the country or any of that sort of thing that drove other presidents, including George W. Bush, to whom the prior commenter spoke, just doesn't apply. | ||
| And so the end to the war between Ukraine and Russia is going to be driven by grift, grievance, or personal protection. | ||
| In the ledger for Russia is that they helped Donald Trump get elected, both in 2016, 2020, and in 2024. | ||
| And he's personally indebted. | ||
| Donald Trump is personally indebted to Vladimir Putin for that. | ||
| In the ledger for Zelensky is, and for Ukraine, is that he's played ball. | ||
| He's praised Donald Trump. | ||
| He has ensured that certain investigations didn't go forward that might look bad on Donald Trump. | ||
| And Donald Trump doesn't want to look like a loser because he's a malignant narcissist in some way. | ||
| All right, Matt. | ||
| And let's go to Hawaii line for Democrats. | ||
| Jeremy, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hello. | |
| I really agree with what Matt's saying about Trump being a, I think he said malignant narcissist. | ||
| Someone that has really captured my attention lately is Madora from Venezuela. | ||
| I know he's a dictator, and there's a lot of oil to be had from Venezuela. | ||
| And I think, you know, I think if we could just partner up with Mandora, maybe, just maybe, we could maybe provide oil to the rest of the United States. | ||
| And I would even like to say, too, to Matt, even though I'm a Democrat like Matt, I think. | ||
| Here's John in Texas, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Hi, John. | ||
| Go right ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, hi. | |
| Well, what I see all this situation here is people in the world today, even though those people have philosophy and all this stuff, but I think we really don't understand. | ||
| We don't really know exactly our humanity history, history that connects with God. | ||
| So that's why all this book, many books and philosophy that they tried in the world today, it's really wrong. | ||
| They don't really understand God's providence. | ||
| So we are like little kids fighting and fighting with one another without knowing the real truth. | ||
| All right, John, and here's Tim in Virginia, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Tim, you're on Open Forum. | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh, okay. | |
| Thanks, thanks for seeing Spam. | ||
| These tax breaks for the rich, this country's $37 trillion in debt, and I just cannot see why they're giving tax breaks to the rich. | ||
| If you go back to Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and now Trump, I'm sure, and no one's talking about this, but I'm sure that it's probably half of what this country is in there for. | ||
| And we just got to quit this stuff. | ||
| And I don't know, I'm just upset about this about taking food stamps from the poor and the health care to get tax breaks to the rich. | ||
| There's just nothing American about that. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And here is George in Fort Worth, Texas, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Hey, I think the Democrats should keep holding out for the health care because we really need it. | ||
| And I'm on the ACA, so I think they should just hold out. | ||
| Have you gotten any information about your premiums, George? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, they've doubled. | |
| Are you going to stay on it, or what are you going to do? | ||
| Have you decided? | ||
|
unidentified
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I have no idea, ma'am, yet. | |
| I'm discussing it with my wife at this time. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And here is John in Massachusetts, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hi, thank you for taking my call. | |
| This is the continuation of Anglo-Western colonial colonizing. | ||
| We colonized all part of the rest of the world for their oil, their resources. | ||
| We're at war with Venezuela right now. | ||
| What Trump wants? | ||
| Oil, oil for the white rich, Wall Street corporations, and industrial complex. | ||
| Where can a brown person be in this country without being invaded or overthrown by dictators like America who go into brown countries and black countries and put dictators in to overthrow the people? | ||
| See, they're coming over here. | ||
| If we didn't have such greedy people on Wall Street overthrowing other countries for their resources, why can't we let people be in their own country, run their own country, and mind our own business? | ||
| Because we have greedy, Anglo-Saxon, Western, and European Zionazis. | ||
| All right, John, and here is a portion of the debate between former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Zorhan Mamdani, who are both running to be mayor of New York City. | ||
|
unidentified
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Here's a portion: This is no job for on-the-job training. | |
| And if you look at the failed mayors, they're ones that had no management experience. | ||
|
unidentified
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Don't do it again. | |
| You know, I have the experience of having served in the New York State Assembly for five years and watching a broken political system, the experience of seeing a governor in Andrew Cuomo who would rather have served his billionaire donors and the working-class New Yorkers who voted for him, | ||
| and the experience amidst all of that of fighting and winning for working-class taxi drivers to free them from predatory debt and delivering the first free bus lines in New York City history and working with unions and working-class New Yorkers to finally raise taxes just that little bit on Mr. Cuomo's donors to start to fully fund our public school. | ||
| And more than that, I have the experience of being a New Yorker, someone who has actually paid rent in the city before I ran for mayor, someone who has had to wait for a bus that never came, someone who actually buys his groceries in this same city. | ||
| And what all of that experience has shown me, which Mr. Cuomo can't seem to understand, is that it is far too expensive and far too hard for New Yorkers to afford to live in this city. | ||
| And the definition of experience is not doing the same thing again and again and hoping for a different result. | ||
| That's actually the definition of insanity. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you, Mr. Mamdani. | |
| If I can, I think I was invoked. | ||
| In other words, what the assemblyman said is he has no experience. | ||
| And this is not a job for someone who has no management experience to run 300,000 people, no financial experience to run $115 billion budget. | ||
| He literally has never had a job. | ||
| On his resume, it says he interned for his mother. | ||
| This is not a job for a first-timer. | ||
| Any day you could have a hurricane, you have, God forbid, a 9-11, a health pandemic. | ||
| If you don't know what you're doing, people are going to be able to do it. | ||
| Mr. Mamdani, if you want to respond. | ||
| And if we have a health pandemic, then why would New Yorkers turn back to the governor who sent seniors to their death in nursing homes? | ||
| That's the kind of experience that's on offer here today. | ||
| What I don't have in experience, I make up for in integrity. | ||
| And what you don't have in integrity, you could never make up for in experience. | ||
| Back to your calls in Open Forum. | ||
| James in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Independent Line. | ||
| Go ahead, James. | ||
|
unidentified
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I want the Democrats to stand tall. | |
| Do not give in to these weak Republicans. | ||
| We know who they're taking their orders from. | ||
| They're scared to death of it. | ||
| We know Donald Trump is the weakest president we've ever had in that White House. | ||
| He just surrounds himself with people weaker than he is to make him look strong. | ||
| Donald Trump, you're at home today in Mar-a-Lago. | ||
| I know you like everybody else. | ||
| You got a TV in every room you get. | ||
| Walk through there. | ||
| Get the message, Trump. | ||
| We are not giving in to you. | ||
| And you're going to find out today how strong this country is and how strong we are and how strong we gonna, what strong people really are. | ||
| We're not giving in to you, Trump. | ||
| Here's Mick in Shawnee, Kansas, Democrat. | ||
| Mick, you're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, Mimi. | |
| I'm calling because about the term Democrat Party, I looked it up. | ||
| Democrat Party is an epithet used primarily by opponents to convey insult and disrespect. | ||
| The user's observation that two nouns together makes no sense points to the source of the term's jarring effect, which is part of its intentional use as a slur. | ||
| It says early use. | ||
| The epithet was used to imply that the opposing party was controlled by undemocratic, dirty bosses and special interests, not the people. | ||
| Senator Joseph McCartney was a noted user of the term in the 1950s. | ||
|
unidentified
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I just cringe every time I hear the word Democrat Party, especially on C-SPAN. | |
| So I'd appreciate it if you'd use the term Democratic Party, please. | ||
| Thank you, Bean. | ||
| Susan in New York, Republican. | ||
| Good morning, Susan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, this is the statement that I would like to make. | |
| It's very clear that the Democrats allowed the borders to be open and let the illegal immigrants in. | ||
| Now, the Democrats are fighting the Republicans when the Democrats are responsible for all of these people that came in illegally. | ||
| And to me, the shutdown is all about paying for the immigrants or not paying for the immigrants. | ||
|
unidentified
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And Donald Trump is 100% correct. | |
| Why should the people that have been here for 10, 15, 20, 50, 100 years be responsible for all the people that crossed the border that the Democrats welcomed into the United States? | ||
|
unidentified
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And this would solve the problem. | |
| The other thing I have to say is: why are the Democrats so upset with wealthy people? | ||
|
unidentified
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Wealthy people worked hard, they made their money. | |
| There are three different categories. | ||
| Wealthy people can afford the most expensive health insurance. | ||
| Middle-class people can afford middle-class health insurance. | ||
| And people that don't have any kind of money can just accept what they can afford. | ||
|
unidentified
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But as far as a shutdown, to me, it's strictly because of the illegal immigrants. | |
| Yep, we got that part, Susan. | ||
| And here's John in Tampa, Florida, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Back to the Ukraine war. | ||
| The last speaker you had, the ex- Yes, John Hurst, Ambassador. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| He blithely swept away the legitimate, what I consider the legitimate concerns of Russia in this war. | ||
| And that's partly the problem, because there's no in-depth look at any of these wars, what is causing them, and why, you know, so that people can have a good understanding of them. | ||
| And for that, I blame you, C-SPAN. | ||
| You have never done a full-go look at both the Gaza and the Russia-Ukraine crisis. | ||
| If you had 1,500 nuclear weapons, would you ever lose a war to a country like Ukraine? | ||
| You blame us for not ever doing a segment on Gaza or on Ukraine. | ||
|
unidentified
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Not ever, not ever doing a segment, but not ever doing an in-depth look at the root causes for these wars. | |
| They have good causes, and these wars are not going to stop until those are addressed. | ||
| Russia has presented their reasons for invading Ukraine, but nobody wants to talk about them, at least nobody in the press in America. | ||
| All right, John, here's Ross, Pompano Beach, Florida, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| At first, I just needed to say that I'm related to one of the founding families of the nation. | ||
| And just seeing the uncivil actions now with this partisanship has got to end. | ||
| So anyway, we need to get back to our foundation. | ||
| And with the founders of the nation, they wrote their documents according to God's laws. | ||
| And that's what we have turned away from. | ||
| And the Constitution was the first Constitution that was ever written of this kind in the history. | ||
| And in 200 years, every nation in the world has adopted a Constitution because of our Constitution, except for six nations. | ||
| Now, what's happening now with that the Constitution is being, well, in a way, it's a collective. | ||
| All right, Ross, I'm going to have to move on. | ||
| David in New Britain, Connecticut, Republican. | ||
| Good morning, David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| I just want to go back to your first guest that was on. | ||
| I just want to make a statement. | ||
| It's very obvious to me that Trump does not like Zelensky. | ||
| He likes Putin. | ||
| And he's going to go and talk to Putin next week or whenever it's going to be. | ||
| And he's going to force Zelensky to let Putin keep all the land he took. | ||
| And that's the way this is going to go, just so Trump could say he had another win. | ||
| And I voted for Trump. | ||
| I support Trump. | ||
| But it's just obvious that he does not like Zelensky. | ||
| He likes Putin better. | ||
| So just remember that. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Here's Brian in Texas, line for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, Brian. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Mimi. | |
| First off, thank you very much for the program you guys put on. | ||
| I heard a couple of disparaging comments about C-SPAN not doing this, not doing that, but it's the best service that we have in this country, if you want, unfiltered and straight to the point news sources. | ||
| And I certainly appreciate it. | ||
| I am concerned about our country. | ||
| I'm a former veteran, and I served in two different conflicts, the Gulf War and the Operation Iraqi Freedom. | ||
| And I think that I would sacrifice again tomorrow to preserve our Constitution. | ||
| But what I am witnessing now, not just from the current resident of the White House or all of the people that he has enabling him, but from my fellow Americans in that they don't realize how precious a gift our Constitution is, | ||
| and that you have to hold it with respect and defend it. | ||
| All right, Brian. | ||
| And just a reminder, we do have the No Kings coverage of the No Kings protest rally coming up today at noon. | ||
| And you can watch that here on C-SPAN. | ||
| That's all that we've got the time for for our program this morning. | ||
| We're back again tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| Hope you have a great day. | ||
| And Ceasefire is up next. | ||
|
unidentified
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Welcome to Ceasefire, where we seek to bridge the divide in American politics. | |
| I'm Dasha Burns, Politico White House Bureau Chief, and today we will talk to governors from both sides of the aisle who have agreed to keep the conversation civil even when they disagree. | ||
| Maryland Democratic Governor Wes Moore and Oklahoma Republican Governor Kevin Stitt. |