| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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Lindsey Graham and House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana are expected to make remarks. | |
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| Coming up this morning on Washington Journal, along with your calls and comments live, National Constitution Center President and CEO Jeffrey Rosen will join us to talk about his new book, The Pursuit of Liberty, how Hamilton versus Jefferson ignited the lasting battle over power in America. | ||
| And then Miles Yu of the Hudson Institute will discuss President Trump's meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea this week after months of trade tensions between the two countries. | ||
| Also, Utah Republican Congressman Blake Moore will talk about the government shutdown and Republican strategy. | ||
| Washington Journal is next. | ||
| Join the conversation. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| It's Friday, October 31st, 2025, day 31 of the government shutdown. | ||
| And it was late last night that President Trump took to social media to call for an end to the Senate legislative filibuster in order to allow Republicans to pass a spending bill and open the government back up. | ||
| It's a move that would represent a fundamental change to Senate rules and traditions. | ||
| And we're talking about it this morning on the Washington Journal on phone lines split as usual by political party. | ||
| Republicans, it's 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| And as we've done throughout the shutdown, we've set aside a special line for federal workers, that number 202-748-8003. | ||
| You can also send us a text or catch up with us on social media on X, it's at C-SPANWJ on Facebook. | ||
| It's facebook.com slash C-SPAN. | ||
| And a very good Friday morning to you. | ||
| You can go ahead and start calling in now. | ||
| President Trump's late night True Social post last night making headlines this morning, including in The Hill newspaper. | ||
| It was a series of posts from President Trump. | ||
| The first post saying, in part, it is now time for the Republicans to play their Trump card and go for what is called the nuclear option. | ||
| Get rid of the filibuster and get rid of it now. | ||
| He went on to say on True Social, because of the fact that the Democrats have gone stone cold crazy, the choice is clear. | ||
| Initiate the nuclear option, get rid of the filibuster, and make America great again. | ||
| President Trump last night, it was just about 21 days ago that Senate Majority Leader John Thune was asked about ending the legislative filibuster to reopen the government. | ||
| This was his response to reporters. | ||
| The filibusters, you know, supermajority requirement is something that makes the Senate the Senate. | ||
| And honestly, if we had done that, there's a whole lot of bad things that could have been done by the other side. | ||
| The 60-the-vote threshold has protected this country. | ||
| And frankly, that's what I think this last election was largely about, because if the Democrats had won the majority, they probably would have tried to nuke the filibuster. | ||
| And then you'd have four new United States senators from Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. | ||
| You'd have a PAC Supreme Court. | ||
| You'd have abortion on demand, a whole bunch of things that were on that laundry list. | ||
| They had about six or seven things that they were going to do when they nuke the filibuster. | ||
| And so the filibuster protects. | ||
| It's been a voice for the minority. | ||
| It gives the minority a say in what happens as a country. | ||
| The founders created the Senate uniquely that way for that specific reason. | ||
| And so it's just really not that complicated. | ||
| All it takes is a little backbone, a little courage on behalf of five Democrats to do what they have done and what we've done for decades when it comes to funding the government. | ||
| Senate Majority Leader John Thune, that was back on October the 10th. | ||
| It is now October 31st, and the filibuster appears to be on the table. | ||
| Meanwhile, impacts of the shutdown continue. | ||
| This is the headline from the New York Times this morning: how states are preparing for a freeze in federal food assistance, supplemental nutrition assistance program, in particular, a program that provides funds for food for some 42 million low-income Americans. | ||
| It was yesterday that Maryland Governor Wes Moore spoke about SNAP funding and blamed Republicans for the shutdown. | ||
| This is what Wes Moore had to say. | ||
| What we are seeing from this federal administration is not just cruel, it's illegal. | ||
| They are breaking the law to show how cruel they can be. | ||
| That I'm thinking about the work that they are doing and how cruelty has essentially become a governance philosophy of the Trump administration. | ||
| Because the money is there. | ||
| They are choosing not to allocate it. | ||
| The money has been appropriated. | ||
| They are choosing not to distribute it. | ||
| This is heartless. | ||
| This is cruel. | ||
| And this is unforgivable. | ||
| And I think about the why we are here, but also the basic necessities that we have to then turn around and provide. | ||
| Because when the federal government says that you are on your own in the state of Maryland, we say we leave no one behind. | ||
| And so today, we are responding to the federal government's derelict of its duty by declaring a state of emergency inside the state of Maryland. | ||
| And I will use all powers vested upon me as the governor of the state of Maryland and immediately use my emergency authority as governor to surge $10 million to food banks and to food bank partners all across the state of Maryland. | ||
| Maryland Democratic Governor Wes Moore there. | ||
| Impacts of the shutdown and new polling today on who's to blame for the shutdown. | ||
| This from a Washington Post ABC News Ipsos poll finding that more than four in 10 U.S. adults, some 45%, say President Trump and Republicans are mainly responsible for the shutdown, though they note the share saying Democrats are at fault has grown slightly from 30% in a poll when the shutdown began to 33% in the latest poll. | ||
| More findings from digging deeper into that poll. | ||
| Democrats are still more than twice as likely as Republicans to be very concerned about the shutdown. | ||
| A 56% majority of people with household incomes under $25,000 are very concerned. | ||
| And the highest of any income group saying they're very concerned about the shutdown. | ||
| Some numbers from the front page story from the Washington Post. | ||
| Taking your phone calls on day 31 of the government shutdown, we can talk about the filibuster. | ||
| We can talk about impacts. | ||
| We can talk to federal workers, a special line for you, 202-748-8003. | ||
| Though we'll start with Joe McCutcheon out of LAJ, Georgia, longtime C-SPAN caller. | ||
| Joe McCutcheon, good morning to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
John, it's great to be on C-SPAN. | |
| You do a great job in calling your great network for 30 years. | ||
| John, I think Donald John Trump is by far the best leader in world history. | ||
| I'm a big stock market guy. | ||
| And as you know, the stock market's been breaking every record known to man. | ||
| And so I tell you what. | ||
| I think I only vote Republican. | ||
| I never vote Democrat because I'm against socialism and high taxes. | ||
| But I think Trump is the best leader in history. | ||
| And I think we're having a great economy, a great stock market. | ||
| And I can't wait to get up each day to watch what the great Donald John Trump is doing. | ||
| And John, you're doing great. | ||
| And I love C-SPAN. | ||
| Joe, where are you on the filibuster? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I mean, I think they need to get the government open. | |
| So if they want to stop it, that's fine with me. | ||
| We need to open the government, and the Democrats need to respond and get it open so the American people can enjoy all the benefits of whatever they are of the government. | ||
| That's Joe down in LA J, Georgia. | ||
| The sun is rising here in Washington, D.C., and we go to Oklahoma, where Lawrence is on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning. | |
| You know, I've been a Democrat all my life. | ||
| I'm 78, and my folks were too. | ||
| This party has changed so damn much. | ||
| It's just, it makes me sick. | ||
| You know, I'm going to move out of it. | ||
| It's terrible, you know, just like Schumer. | ||
| You know, he needs to be in the home. | ||
| You know, take Pelosi with him. | ||
| You know, Lawrence, who was the last Democrat you voted for? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Pardon me? | |
| Who was the last Democrat you voted for? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Last election. | |
| But like I said, I'm changing. | ||
| You voted for Kamala Harris? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, this is ridiculous, you know. | |
| Why did you go around? | ||
| Why did you think Kamala Harris should win that election? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was a Democrat. | |
| I'm just a solid Democrat, like I told you, my folks were too. | ||
| I'm just fed up. | ||
| I'm moving, you know, I don't know, independent or something's got to happen. | ||
| I just wanted to make a comment and thank you. | ||
| That's Lawrence in Oklahoma. | ||
| This is Sean out of Florida. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a retired federal worker, and I'm happy that Trump said that last night, and it's pushing the Senate Majority Leader to end the filibuster. | |
| I've been tweeting that all week to conservative sites, and I've been calling the Senate Majority Leader's office, asking for that. | ||
| And I'm glad it's happening because it's going to stop the pain for the federal workers. | ||
| I know what it's like to go through a government shutdown and not get paid. | ||
| And I'm relieved that this is happening. | ||
| Sean, are you concerned about what eliminating the filibuster could mean down the road? | ||
| You talk about eliminating the pain right now. | ||
| John Thune saying the filibuster is what makes the Senate the Senate. | ||
| It protects, it makes it has protected this country for decades. | ||
| What are your thoughts on his defense of the filibuster? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I believe in the opposite. | |
| I think it's going to force each party to truly go after the votes and do the right thing for their constituents. | ||
| This filibuster thing, it just keeps us in a deadlock every fiscal year. | ||
| Nobody wants to go through this. | ||
| I think each side has to fight for their policies and their views and let the best man win. | ||
| What if we had this filibuster rule in the House of Representatives? | ||
| We would never get anything done. | ||
| So, each party, get your behind out there and push for your policies and let the chips score what they may. | ||
| I know it's a Pandora's box, but hey, we can't go through this every year. | ||
| This is ridiculous. | ||
| People can't be stuck in the middle while you play in games. | ||
| They're getting paid, and the workers aren't getting paid. | ||
| They have to go to work. | ||
| I just flew this past weekend, and I was just looking at the faces of the TSA workers, and I was just in pain for them, man. | ||
| This is terrible. | ||
| That's Sean down in Florida. | ||
| House members have a simple majority vote in the Senate. | ||
| It's a 60-vote threshold for legislative votes. | ||
| Though House members are very much concerned about the filibuster, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, with this ex-post last night after the President's Truth Social post, saying, Thank you, President Trump. | ||
| This is what I called for from the very beginning. | ||
| Since Democrats refuse to fund the government, Senate Republicans need to use the nuclear option and override the filibuster. | ||
| Enough of the drama. | ||
| Stop forcing people to suffer and lead the country. | ||
| President Trump made his series of true social posts late last night in the 10 p.m. Eastern hour. | ||
| The first post was a rather lengthy post. | ||
| Here's more from it. | ||
| He said, Just a short while ago, the Democrats, while in power, fought for three years to do this to get rid of the filibuster, but they were unable to pull it off because of Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Kristen Sinema of Arizona. | ||
| Never have the Democrats fought so hard to do something because they knew the tremendous strength that terminating the filibuster would give them. | ||
| He went on to say: if the Democrats ever came back into power, which would be made easier for them if the Republicans are not using the great strength and policies made available to us by ending the filibuster, the Democrats will exercise their rights, and it will be done in the first day they take office, regardless of whether or not we do it. | ||
| Talking about ending the filibuster. | ||
| Raymond, Pensacola, Florida, Republican, you're up next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| First of all, I remember the Affordable Care Act. | ||
| It was proposed to be a penalty if you didn't sign up. | ||
| But they found out that they could not do that. | ||
| I'm talking about the Democrats. | ||
| They said they could not penalize something for buying something you don't need or don't want. | ||
| So it was changed to a tax. | ||
| They can tax people. | ||
| I am being taxed. | ||
| And I found out two days ago. | ||
| I used a commissary, I'm retired Air Force, that the commissary only has enough money for probably two or three weeks. | ||
| They're going to be shut down. | ||
| All this is going on because anybody can add 53 compared to 45, I'm talking about the votes, means that that is more. | ||
| And also, I probably call myself a millionaire because I got a tax break when President Trump first was in office. | ||
| I'm not a millionaire, never have been. | ||
| But I got a tax break. | ||
| I still have that tax break because they changed the amount of money people are taxed. | ||
| So you can hear all this stuff about these millionaires and billionaires. | ||
| I'm not a millionaire, but I get a tax break. | ||
| So just rhetoric about talking about the votes for the Republicans because they're rewarding the millionaires and billionaires. | ||
| And also, I've not always voted for Republicans because I look at the candidates and what they say they're going to do, and hopefully they're going to do what they're going to do. | ||
| Let's go back to the 53 to 45 means that it should have been taken care of. | ||
| Continue. | ||
| They talk about law and order. | ||
| Well, when Congress is open and they do all these debates about funding the government, that is law and order. | ||
| That's Raymond out of Pensacola on the military front. | ||
| Some news there. | ||
| This is the NBC News headline. | ||
| The Trump administration plans to pay military members today by using a mix of legislative and defense department funds, according to an official from the White House Office of Management and Budget. | ||
| It would be the second time the White House has been able to avoid missing a pay period for troops during the government shutdown. | ||
| Service members considered essential federal employees and are required to work during funding lapses. | ||
| Essential workers typically aren't paid during shutdowns, though, but the military getting that paycheck today. | ||
| This is Nathan in Virginia Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I had a question for you more than anything else. | ||
| I'm trying to understand why the ACA needs to be now in this, like before the shutdown gets released. | ||
| And just from either side, and why neither the Democrats or the Republicans kind of address the timeline. | ||
| Hearing from the House minority leader just now, he's talking about the CR is not clean. | ||
| So I'm also curious on what are the other things that are inside of that that he's saying are not clean. | ||
| It's not bipartisan. | ||
| Because have the Democrats shown the timeline of when things need to happen for the ACA? | ||
| As I understand, I heard somewhere on this show that the costs go up in December. | ||
| And then it's the costs for next year. | ||
| The push now, the need that Democrats argue now is people are getting their premium notices for next year in November. | ||
| And November is when you can change your health care plan. | ||
| And so people are finding out the expected costs next year. | ||
| And those costs are factoring in a lapse in the tax money that would help pay for covering parts of the premium. | ||
| Does that make sense? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, no, I understand all that. | |
| Like, this is all for next year, but the prices wouldn't actually go up until December. | ||
| So why isn't it that the CR could be passed now? | ||
| And this is also on the Republican side. | ||
| Why aren't the Republicans showing, hey, if you pass the CR now, then here is the time duration that we would be negotiating or working on the bill that addresses the ACA prior to whenever, really prior to whenever is the last drop bid time before costs would actually go up in December. | ||
| Even if it goes past the timeline of when people receive notifications that their costs are going to go up, that doesn't mean that they're actually going to go up if they get back in the middle. | ||
| Nathan, you're saying there's still time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know. | |
| Like, none of us know. | ||
| Neither side are saying what is the criticality of addressing it now and why is it not critical to address it now. | ||
| That's Nathan in Virginia. | ||
| This is John Easton, Pennsylvania Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| I'm just going to make a point here. | ||
| Congress is controlled by the Republicans and the Senate is controlled by the Republicans. | ||
| Why can't they pass a bill? | ||
| Because it's a big, ugly bill, not a big, beautiful bill. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| They're fighting for their jobs. | ||
| The Republicans are fighting for their job. | ||
| When Johnson would stand up and make a press release, he had eight hard-lining Republicans, nine of them sometimes, standing behind him. | ||
| Now he only has two, maybe. | ||
| And the same as in the Senate. | ||
| They're fighting for their jobs. | ||
| The Republicans are fighting for their job, and they're blaming it on the Democrats. | ||
| We didn't have a shutdown during the Biden administration. | ||
| We didn't have a shutdown during the Obama administration unless they wanted one. | ||
| It's the Republicans. | ||
| Trump lies. | ||
| What's your view on the filibuster, John? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello? | |
| The guy's nuts. | ||
| And what does he need a ballroom for, huh? | ||
| That's John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Does he need a ballroom for? | |
| That's John in Easton, Pennsylvania. | ||
| This is Rachel, Houston, Texas, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| I'm calling because, well, today's Halloween, and yesterday, my insurance company, which I get from the marketplace, told me what my premium was going to be for next year. | ||
| It's gone up over 54%. | ||
| It will be over $1,800 a month. | ||
| I don't know how anybody, that's just for one person. | ||
| Anybody can afford that. | ||
| And in addition to that, someone had called in saying, you know, why does this need to be fixed now? | ||
| It needs to be fixed now because it's not just the cost of premiums that's affected by the shutdown. | ||
| It's the fact that someone they take care of is unable to get a telehealth visit that the patient desperately needs because of the shutdown. | ||
| All of this needs to be fixed. | ||
| And I think that the government needs to stay closed until this is worked out. | ||
| So, Rachel, you're calling in on the Republican line. | ||
| The point that you're arguing is a point the Democrats and Congress have argued. | ||
| Do you think Republicans are in the wrong here? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I do. | |
| That's Rachel in Houston, Texas. | ||
| This is Rich, Kingsport, Tennessee, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning. | |
| Filibuster needs to stay. | ||
| This is just politics as usual. | ||
| And a word that we're not hearing, we're hearing about leverage and other things. | ||
| And this is just plain blackmail. | ||
| People understand that term. | ||
| And Democrats are saying it's my way or the highway. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that's exactly what the filibuster would do. | |
| It would give one party, whoever the party is in power, they would have unlimited power. | ||
| They couldn't be checked. | ||
| And that's what soon is correct. | ||
| And we need to keep the filibuster. | ||
| One thing I would recommend people, if they want to see what this is really all about, they might want to check the archive from yesterday. | ||
| Representative Bynum from Oregon, the Democrat, was on. | ||
| She said she would not vote for a CR. | ||
| It wasn't clean because it contained poison pills. | ||
| And Greta asked her directly to name some of the poison pills. | ||
| And there was dead silence. | ||
| And a deer in the headlights look, and immediately she blamed Greta for trying to shift the blame. | ||
|
unidentified
|
She couldn't name a single poison pill. | |
| And when the segment ended, she said, My pleasure in being here. | ||
| But if looks could kill the look she gave Greta, because that's what it's all about. | ||
| It's just a power play. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Unfortunately, it seems the public is falling for it, judging by the polls. | |
| These CRs, this has been, I never liked them, but it's a fact of life and it's continued for forever. | ||
| And now we see shifting roles and Democrats decrying the CR and just holding out. | ||
| And it seems to be working. | ||
| The blackmail seems to be working and the public is falling for it. | ||
| It's just really discouraging. | ||
| As far as SNAP benefits and things, you hear the Massachusetts governor saying, using state funds, well, that's what state need to do. | ||
| Government funds come from us, from the taxpayers. | ||
| Let's just use the state funds to fund, let charities kick in the way they used to, quit relying on government to do everything, and maybe that's one good thing that could come from this. | ||
| That's Rich in Kingsport, Tennessee. | ||
| He was referring to Maryland Governor Wes Moore's statements that we played a little bit earlier. | ||
| Yesterday, Speaker Mike Johnson also was asked about the SNAP program and what happens to recipients of that program in the coming days and weeks. | ||
| This is what he had to say. | ||
|
unidentified
|
During the last shutdown in 2019, it was the first Trump administration, and they made sure that in the second month of the shutdown, SNAP benefits would go out. | |
| They had them sent early. | ||
| Why do you think they shouldn't do that this time? | ||
| Well, President, this administration has done exactly what he did in the first term, and that is bend over backwards to make sure that we mitigate the harm. | ||
| We explained here yesterday that any administration in a shutdown scenario has figuratively a control panel of pain dials. | ||
| In the Obama administration, 2013, when they shut it down, they turned all the dials to 10. | ||
| They wanted it to hurt. | ||
| And so remember, famously, they put the yellow crime tape around the World War II Memorial and prevented aging veterans from going and visiting these landmarks. | ||
| They made it hurt. | ||
| President Trump has done exactly the opposite. | ||
| I mean, he's done everything he can. | ||
| He's ordered all of his cabinet secretaries to mitigate the harm. | ||
| So, for example, as you know, with WIC funding, they found a way to fund that with tariff revenue. | ||
| We found a way to pay the troops once already in October, hopefully at the end of this month by moving money around. | ||
| But it's very difficult to do. | ||
| Those are not inexhaustible funds. | ||
| When it comes to SNAP, some of the Democrats have argued that you can use this contingency fund, but the truth is there's no legal mechanism to do it. | ||
| Unlike with WIC funding that was attached to a 1930 statute that was related to tariff funds because it was related to nutrition and food coming over the border, there's no such legal avenue to give SNAP funding now. | ||
| It doesn't exist. | ||
| The problem is the contingency and the authority to do that was voted down in the CR when the Democrats themselves did it. | ||
| So the president has lamented this. | ||
| He has informed USDA and everybody. | ||
| Do as best you can, but the money doesn't exist to do it. | ||
| The simplest way to end the pain and the simplest way to make this stop is for the Democrats to do the obvious and right thing and vote for the nonpartisan funding measure so that we can turn everything back on. | ||
| Speaker Mike Johnson, yesterday we'll hear from the speaker again today. | ||
| 10 a.m. Eastern is when he's expected to address reporters. | ||
| If you stay with us here on C-SPAN, that's where we're going to go when this program ends. | ||
| But it's our first hour of the Washington Journal this morning. | ||
| We're about a half an hour in and taking your phone calls on the government shutdown. | ||
| A31 phone lines for Republicans, Democrats, Independents, and a special line for federal workers. | ||
| 202-748-8003 is that line for federal workers. | ||
| And Wayne is waiting on that line out of Georgia. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Everyone. | |
| Yeah, I'm against using nuclear option. | ||
| I'm a federal worker. | ||
| Obviously, I want to get this whole thing behind us, but using the nuclear option is not part of that. | ||
| You know, we have failed to learn to compromise, and that is a big problem with this country. | ||
| You know, we have to go back to having people that can sit down on a table and work out deals. | ||
| You know, shortcutting that process to me is shortcutting the Democratic process. | ||
| And I think that in the long term, it's going to lead to more instability in our government. | ||
| Wayne, do you think the filibuster is a tool that has forced compromise over the years? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Supposed to do. | |
| It's supposed to make sure that we have a sustainable policy in place for long term, not these like, you know, every time you have an election and the House changes and all of a sudden you change policy all of a sudden. | ||
| We have to have long-term policies in place to have stability. | ||
| So, you know, trying to circumvent that is going to be problematic on the long run. | ||
| So I just disagree with doing that. | ||
| That's Wayne in Georgia, some history from Senate.gov, the website of the United States Senate on the filibuster. | ||
| Whether praised as the protector of political minorities from the tyranny of the majority or attacked as a tool of partisan obstruction, the right of unlimited debate in the Senate, including the filibuster, has been a key component of the Senate's unique role in the American political system. | ||
| The tactic using long speeches to delay action on legislation appeared in the very first session of the Senate on September 22nd, 1789. | ||
| Pennsylvania Senator William McClay wrote in his diary that the design of the Virginians was to talk away the time so that we could not get the bill passed. | ||
| As the number of filibusters grew in the 19th century, the Senate had no formal process to allow a majority to end debate and force a vote, rules changing over the years. | ||
| But the legislative history of the filibuster at Senate.gov reads towards the end, the type of filibuster most familiar to Americans is the marathon speech by a small group of senders or even a single sender, such as the filibuster staged by the fictional Jefferson Smith in Frank Capra's 1939 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. | ||
| There have been some famous filibusters in the real-life Senate as well. | ||
| In 1917, for example, Wisconsin Senator Robert La Follette used the filibuster to demand free speech during wartime. | ||
| During the 1930s, Senator Huey Long effectively used the filibuster against bills that he thought favored the rich over the poor. | ||
| In the 1950s, Oregon Senator Wayne Morse famously used the filibuster to educate the public on issues he considered to be of national interest. | ||
| South Carolina Strom Thurmond filibustered for 24 hours and 18 minutes during the Civil Rights Act of 1957. | ||
| And the record for the longest individual speech goes to New Jersey's Corey Booker, who spoke for 25 hours and five minutes against the policies of Donald Trump and his administration in April of 2025. | ||
| Senate.gov is where you can go for more history on the filibuster. | ||
| This is Beth in New York, a Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Beth, you with us? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I'm here. | |
| Go ahead with your comment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, yes. | |
| Well, thank you for listening to me, to listening to us. | ||
| But listen, this White House is putting us in a crisis and it's getting worse. | ||
| And it's going to get worse if they keep, you know, they haven't decided on anything. | ||
| And it's cruel, you know. | ||
| And, you know, down the road, it's also going to hurt our national security. | ||
| You know, the Republicans that are against the Democrats, they're nothing but little pawns. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, the White House tells them what to do, and they just jump. | |
| And they only have wishbone. | ||
| You know, the Democrats are my heroes. | ||
| They have backbone. | ||
| President Biden, he's my hero. | ||
| You know, thank you, Mr. President, for doing all that you did for us. | ||
| And I pray for your recovery as you go through your cancer treatment. | ||
| And Obama was my hero. | ||
| Clinton was my hero. | ||
| Now, there was a president that stood up for, you know, he made a mistake and justice prevailed. | ||
| This White House, he's doing, he's creating, he could be impeached. | ||
| He's doing his own. | ||
| He's above the, he's breaking all the laws. | ||
| He should be impeached. | ||
| That's Beth in New York. | ||
| We'll stay in the Empire State. | ||
| This is Sophia, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| For the voting, the filibuster, Mr. Schumer wants to get credit. | ||
| Mr. Johnson wants to get credit. | ||
| We are left alone. | ||
| John, I want to say this. | ||
| I'm a white American. | ||
| I'm a black American. | ||
| I'm a brown American. | ||
| I'm an Asian American. | ||
| This beautiful country of us, we took it by force from the Native American. | ||
| Now, what goes around? | ||
| It comes around. | ||
| It'll be 75 next month. | ||
| The brown people always, the black people, the Asian American, they march. | ||
| Now, the white Americans are marching, killing each other, begging for fruit. | ||
| They are on the line. | ||
| That's one thing I miss. | ||
| Working. | ||
| Anyway, thank you for another thing. | ||
| I wish they leaved President Barack Obama. | ||
| I voted for him. | ||
| Thank you for listening. | ||
| I love you, okay? | ||
| That's Sophia in New York. | ||
| This is Richard out of South Carolina, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, number one, you need to keep the filibuster. | |
| And the only thing I can say, if I were a federal employee, why would I approve of the Democrats using me as a negotiating point, my unemployment, my not getting checks, to force the Republicans to agree to their agenda? | ||
| So I don't agree with that at all. | ||
| I think you open the government, then you can negotiate. | ||
| That's what winning elections are all about. | ||
| So that's just my feeling on it. | ||
| That's Richard in South Carolina. | ||
| Kevin's in Minnesota. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I think all it amounts to is they don't trust each other. | ||
| Anything more you want to add, Kevin? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think that's simply put. | |
| And I don't think I'll just basically say that if one buckles, the other one will basically try to change what's in place. | ||
| And I don't think they'll come up with a compromise one bit. | ||
| Kevin, do you think the shutdown is impacting you in Minnesota? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it impacts me as far as the medical end of things. | |
| I had brain surgery about five years ago and the cost of being up and on doubt, not doubting or doubting, excuse me, where I stand with that and then the big picture. | ||
| Yeah, I just don't think that one gives the other one will take advantage of it and change things. | ||
| It's Kevin in the land of 10,000 lakes in terms of shutdown impacts. | ||
| This from the grounds of the White House yesterday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy spoke about the challenges facing the aviation industry. | ||
| This is what he had to say. | ||
| We look at the aviation system and we've seen blips and blurbs, whether it's LAX or it's Atlanta or it's Dallas. | ||
| You're seeing impacts of this shutdown on our airspace. | ||
| And that means travelers are delayed, travelers are canceled. | ||
| It has real problems. | ||
| So our air traffic controllers, their first paycheck they missed, well, they got 90%, 80% of the paycheck. | ||
| That was in early October. | ||
| They just missed their full paycheck. | ||
| And you got to think, well, then the second paycheck comes, that's not when we have real disruption. | ||
| Because every single day, as all of you people know, as we all pay our bills, right, it's not just the mortgage and the car payment, which is very real. | ||
| But they're buying food. | ||
| They travel 30, 45 minutes into the towers or the centers. | ||
| So you have to buy gas. | ||
| They have kids that want to play football or volleyball or tennis, and they can't afford the very life expenses that they need those paychecks for. | ||
| And so though we've maintained the safety, I'm grateful for our controllers who are coming in every day. | ||
| But I do think as this shutdown continues, you're going to see more pressure on controllers, more pressure on TSA workers, and that's going to have real impact. | ||
| One group that we don't talk about a lot is we have technicians that work in our centers. | ||
| I've talked to you all about how old our equipment is. | ||
| We have technicians that come in every single day to make sure this equipment actually works. | ||
| They too aren't getting paid. | ||
| And this is burning and it's having a real impact on our men and women who serve our airspace. | ||
| And so I would join the vice president and say, don't hold us hostage. | ||
| Don't hold American families travel hostage. | ||
| Don't hold air traffic controllers hostage. | ||
| Open up the government, have a conversation. | ||
| Let's get it resolved. | ||
| But again, every day it gets harder. | ||
| Every day there's going to be more challenges. | ||
| And the last point I'll make before I turn it over to Sean O'Brien's really great hair day today is the fact that a lot of our people can go through the miss of one paycheck and it's hard for them, but a lot of them can get through it. | ||
| None of them can get through two paychecks. | ||
| And so again, if Democrats don't get their act together very quickly, you're going to see huge problems. | ||
| And again, I just, I would come to them with a clean heart and say, open up the government, and then let's have a conversation. | ||
| I was the Transportation Secretary yesterday from the White House taking your phone calls this morning on the Washington Journal. | ||
| This is Phoebe waiting in Easton, Pennsylvania, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I would like to understand how the American people are meant to believe that President Trump is the best negotiator to ever grace the face of the earth, but he's unable to get a deal through with the Democrats. | ||
| It doesn't make any sense to me. | ||
| I would like to understand why it's acceptable for the House not to be in session for almost 90 days. | ||
| Can you imagine if any of us didn't show up to work for 90 days? | ||
| I'd like to understand why negotiations were good enough for John Adams and George Washington at the Continental Congress, but they're not good enough for John Spoon and Speaker Johnson. | ||
| I would like to understand why it's acceptable for the CEOs of Delta and United to be lickery split at the trough when they need bailouts from American taxpayers in 2001 and 2020. | ||
| But here they are going crawling on yellow bellies to the White House to turn their backs on the American people. | ||
| There are children in this country who won't get cancer treatment for lack of health care. | ||
| There are people who will starve for the failure of this government to put snap through. | ||
| Shame on all of them. | ||
| Go back to work. | ||
| Thank you for your time, and I hope you have a lovely weekend. | ||
| Happy Halloween, everyone. | ||
| That's Phoebe in Easton, Pennsylvania. | ||
| You talk about deal-making deals coming on the foreign policy front. | ||
| This is the front page of the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| You probably saw the news yesterday. | ||
| President Trump cuts China tariffs after Xi Jinping talks, the first face-to-face meeting in six years between the president and the president of China. | ||
| The U.S. agreed to lower a fentanyl-related tariff on Chinese goods to 10% from 20% after China promised to crack down on chemicals used to make the often deadly drug. | ||
| Beijing also promised to ease some of the controls it imposed on exports of processed rare earth materials for one year. | ||
| In addition, China agreed to buy large amounts of U.S. soybeans. | ||
| The deal between President Trump and President Xi Jinping, we'll talk more about it in our 8 o'clock hour. | ||
| Miles Yu of the Hudson Institute, a senior fellow and director of the China Policy Center. | ||
| He served Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in the State Department during the first Trump administration. | ||
| He'll be joining us for that conversation to take your calls on the U.S.-China deal yesterday. | ||
| This is Steve in North Dakota, Republican. | ||
| Steve, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, sir. | |
| I'm a hardcore Republican, and I voted for Donald Trump. | ||
| But lately, right now, I'm giving him a C. For one thing, we don't need to get rid of the filibuster. | ||
| We are a constitutional republic. | ||
| The filibuster is important. | ||
| Another thing I'm giving him a C for is who in the world thinks we need more or better nuclear weapons. | ||
| That's one of the deals with China, is they get their nuclear weapons and we're going to build more. | ||
| We got enough to obliterate the earth. | ||
| That's all I have to say. | ||
| That's Steve in the Peace Garden State to the Green Mountain State. | ||
| This is Carl Democrat in Vermont. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Go ahead, Carl. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Doing well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, yeah, I've been listening to the news a lot. | |
| I've been hearing the Republicans say, it's the Democrats' fault. | ||
| Take responsibility. | ||
| It is your people that caused the shutdown. | ||
| It is your people that call it. | ||
| Carl, you're calling in on the line for Democrats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Are they your people as well? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| It's hurting me because the Democrats are the ones that the Republicans are blaming us because they're the ones to blame. | ||
| We should be blaming them, is what I'm saying. | ||
| We should be blaming them because we didn't do anything. | ||
| They won't negotiate with us, is that what they're not doing. | ||
| They will not negotiate. | ||
| They want us to crack under pressure and give into their bogus bill, which will lose us, will cause millions of people to lose their health care and cause millions of people to, you know, not go to the hospital or not go to the ER because they're afraid, oh, I'm going to have to pay full price on insurance. | ||
| Carl, you said you've been paying attention to this. | ||
| Do you usually pay this close attention to the news or what happens here in Washington? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I watch a ton of the MSNBC. | ||
| So, yeah, I've been paying attention a whole lot because I'm a registered voter and I've been watching and it's just, I hate it. | ||
| So, if, and in a six-week vacation, bullcrap? | ||
| I mean, come on. | ||
| Come back, negotiate a deal like men. | ||
| Carl, do you mind if I ask how old you are? | ||
| Carl, are you still with us? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm here. | |
| Do you mind if I ask how old you are? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm 25. | |
| Do you think folks your age, 25-year-olds in this country, are starting to pay attention to the shutdown? | ||
| Do you think they have been paying attention? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'd say, yeah. | |
| I would say, yeah, people my age have been paying attention because 25-year-olds are British voters. | ||
| They should be registered voters. | ||
| And I feel like this coming 2026 and into 2028, I feel we're going to have a blue wall. | ||
| I feel we're going to get the House blue, the Senate blue, and then the presidency in 2028 is going to be blue. | ||
| So I feel we're going to have a blue wall these next couple years. | ||
| That's Carl in Vermont. | ||
| This is Harry out of Norcross, Georgia, Independent. | ||
| Go ahead, Harry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning there, all you listening at C-SPAN. | |
| I'm going to try and talk a little faster than I usually do. | ||
| I'm kind of wondering about the Republicans in the red states. | ||
| They've been voting for Trump to take down all these federal agencies. | ||
| Now, if I'm not mistaken, the SNAP benefits are collected by the federal government from the states according to the state's ability to pay. | ||
| And they're redistributed to the states on a basis of need. | ||
| And the red states have more need. | ||
| And so with Maryland now going to distribute its own SNAP benefits, they're a blue state generally, I think. | ||
| And so they're going to distribute that money amongst themselves instead of subsidizing the red states with it, where the people in the red states are going to have a harder time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They've done the same thing with the hospitals, and they've done the same thing with schools. | |
| You know, if you break up the Education Department, you're going to get fewer rich state money into the poorer red states. | ||
| So the kids that go to school in the red states are going to suffer. | ||
| I don't understand this logic, or I don't understand how Trump sells it. | ||
| Okay, thank you, C-SPAN. | ||
| That's Harry in Georgia. | ||
| We'll stay in the Peach State. | ||
| This is LaKelle in Jessup. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how are you doing, sir? | |
| Doing well. | ||
| That's great. | ||
| That's great. | ||
| And looking at the filibuster that is of interest, I think that the long-pending filibuster is like a magic minute of the House of Representatives. | ||
| In this bicameral state that we have, the Senate is targeting the Democrats, which is the House of Representatives mainly, or the Maquel. | ||
| Republicans control the House of Representatives and Republicans control the Senate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I do understand that. | |
| But the control of the Democratic vote, let's say, for instance, the minority leader Schroemer, who is actually somewhat controlling or maneuvering the federal shutdown. | ||
| It is for the acquisition and is for to ascertain funding, government funding, which is allotted per each state, the constituent basis, meaning like, say, for instance, | ||
| your SNAP and several other allocations for citizens who may not work, who do work, but yet who need an extra support system in order to sustain medical costs, medical benefits, food provisioning. | ||
| However, for some reason, the Democrat says that they are going to rule against Trump, and the rule against Trump is going to be this federal shutdown. | ||
| All right. | ||
| That's Laquel. | ||
| This is Nate, Milwaukee, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for having me. | |
| I wanted to point out two different things. | ||
| One relating to the shutdown right now and one that I think is a problem overall that we ought to really be paying attention to. | ||
| The first about the shutdown is the distrust that we got going into this. | ||
| I think it can be debated, just is this a clean CR or not? | ||
| Because what happened is throughout this year, again and again, after Trump got in, Republicans have been, I'm forgetting the word for it, but basically breaking the agreements that they had made with Democrats before and then clawing back money for programs like funding PBS and stuff after they had said, okay, we'll make that part of the budget. | ||
| So after saying this will be part of the budget, this will be part of the budget, and then taking it back. | ||
| This is the rescission process that you're talking about. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, thank you for giving me that word. | |
| They've managed to destroy all trust. | ||
| And anybody who looks at it over the years shouldn't be surprised that nobody trusts each other, which is a terrible thing. | ||
| Also, with the blue states, point out that the governors of multiple blue states are suing the Trump administration to release contingency funds for food. | ||
| And we'll see how the courts work that out. | ||
| But the fact that they've got this fund, they're choosing not to do it. | ||
| And only the blue state governors and attorney generals are fighting to get their people some share of that SNAP benefit, I think shows you at the state level which people are actually trying to help people. | ||
| And the threats to fire federal workers shows you who's willing to hold U.S. citizens as hostages. | ||
| The broader problem I'd point out is gerrymandering, which one political party seems to be made worse. | ||
| And I'll point out that in my state, which is Wisconsin, we are just getting over 12 years of having a gerrymandered state legislature. | ||
| And that means for 12 years, we didn't really have honest elections for who got to run things in our state, in part of our state government. | ||
| And that would have been over years ago. | ||
| And none of the gerrymandering we're talking about now for this year would have happened had in a court case called Gill versus Whitford, which was part of people in Wisconsin trying to say the gerrymandering shouldn't happen because it basically takes away our votes. | ||
| It takes away our voice. | ||
| It makes the votes not equal representation because some people aren't effectively represented anymore. | ||
| But the RNC and a whole bunch of Republican politicians, some of which are still in office today, pressured the U.S. Supreme Court. | ||
| They wrote to it asking them to basically protect gerrymandering. | ||
| I'm not sure if the court case number is 16-1161, but the court case itself was Gill versus Whitford. | ||
| And they, from across the U.S., told the U.S. Supreme Court, protect gerrymandering, basically protect the ability to rig elections. | ||
| And now when the Democrats had control of Congress last year, the House under Democratic control passed a bill that would have gotten rid of gerrymandering, no matter who did it, Democratic or Republican, so that all elections would be basically more honest across the U.S. | ||
| And Republicans filibustered that. | ||
| So I think without the gerrymandering, you'd have to. | ||
| Are you talking about the representatives? | ||
| Are you talking about the Senate? | ||
| Republicans controlled the House last year. | ||
|
unidentified
|
When, I mean, back when Biden was president, the last time Pelosi was Speaker. | |
| Gotcha. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They actually did. | |
| I think we got your point, Nate. | ||
| That's Nate in Milwaukee. | ||
| You started by talking about trust on Capitol Hill. | ||
| That issue coming up in a separate news story that came up yesterday. | ||
| The Senate Intelligence Committee, usually one of those committees on Capitol Hill that has the best working relationships, the most trust, though we found out yesterday, Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, was blasting the Trump administration following reports that his Republican counterpoint parts were briefed on the unilateral strikes against drug boats in the Caribbean, condemning a partisan briefing as indefensible. | ||
| There's the headline from the Hill newspaper. | ||
| Monty Raju of CNN on Capitol Hill noted yesterday that Republicans tell us that the administration should have invited Democrats to that briefing on the Caribbean boat strikes after Democrats were excluded. | ||
| Kevin Kramer, the Republican senator, saying, I don't think that any administration should leave out any party from a briefing on that level of importance. | ||
| He quotes Mike Rounds as saying this should have been delivered on a bipartisan basis. | ||
| But I want to show you Virginia Democrats, Mark Warner's statement yesterday to reporters on this topic. | ||
| Let me be clear. | ||
| I've worked well with Marco over many, many years. | ||
| I was proud to support him for Secretary of State. | ||
| He looked me in the eye and promised me this. | ||
| I hope that he assumed that promise would be carried out before he left the country. | ||
| And I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise. | ||
| But if some lackey in the White House said, no, we can't share that, we can't open ourselves up to actual congressional oversight in any administration, including Trump one, that person would be fired. | ||
| I think they know they screwed up. | ||
| But saying they screwed up, if they say they acknowledge you screwed up, fire somebody. | ||
| But the question I've got is, this is a pattern. | ||
| This is not a one-off. | ||
| And where in the hell were my Republican senators who we have worked on everything in a bipartisan fashion? | ||
| Why didn't they say, isn't this a little bit weird that we don't have any Democrats in the room? | ||
| Virginia Democrat Mark Warner, Senate Intelligence Committee, vice chair yesterday on Capitol Hill. | ||
| Just about five minutes left here in the first segment of the Washington Journal. | ||
| We are taking your phone calls on government shutdown day 31. | ||
| It was late last night that President Trump called for an end to the filibuster to allow Republicans to move ahead with legislation to reopen the government. | ||
| It's now on the table. | ||
| We'll see what sort of response it gets today from Republican members of the U.S. Senate. | ||
| This is Tim in Minnesota, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I was, in regards to health insurance and Medicare and Medicaid and all that stuff, I was a visit nurse. | ||
| I was a nurse for 33 years. | ||
| And my last job, I was a visit nurse. | ||
| And I think I never met a person. | ||
| I did that job for almost three years, and I never met a person that didn't need the services they were getting, like Medicare, Medicare, and Medicaid. | ||
| What does a visit nurse do, Tim? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just you go and help people set up their meds. | |
| It might be a post post-op visit, you know, various things. | ||
| There's a lot of services that you provide. | ||
| But people need to, what people really need to do, we had to take these classes every year, and it was on fraud, waste, and abuse in the CMS system. | ||
| And what people really need to do is they need to familiarize themselves with terms like kickbacks, unbundling, up quoting, billing for services not rendered, and billing for unnecessary services. | ||
| It seems like what they're doing is they're turning it around and they're blaming it on the masses, you know, i.e., snap recipients, WIC recipients, blaming on the other party, or blaming on immigrants, you know. | ||
| And you contrast that with the stranglehold that the insurance company has on Capitol Hill, i.e., the number of lobbyists. | ||
| It's all about money. | ||
| So that's pretty much all I had to say. | ||
| That's Tim in Minnesota. | ||
| Time for maybe just one or two more phone calls. | ||
| This is Don out in California, Republican, up early. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Hi. | ||
| Yeah, it's crystal clear to me that the reason why we have a government shutdown is Trump's big, beautiful bill passed. | ||
| And the Democrats are desperate to gut it, to show their base that, look, we took a big chunk out of the big, beautiful bill. | ||
| And so now they're using poor people and government workers as human shields in order to get their way. | ||
| The subsidies for the Unaffordable Care Act are a joke because the Unaffordable Care Act needs an overhaul. | ||
| It doesn't need more money. | ||
| It makes our health care more expensive. | ||
| It doesn't make it cheaper. | ||
| So that's a joke. | ||
| That's the silliest reason I ever heard for doing this. | ||
| And what it seems to me is the Democrats are willing to burn America to the ground as long as they can rule over the ashes. | ||
| It's a very sad situation here. | ||
| I think it's so good. | ||
| You're running short on time, Don. | ||
| What's your view on the filibuster? | ||
|
unidentified
|
On the filibuster? | |
| No, I don't. | ||
| I want the filibuster to stay. | ||
| I don't like the filibuster, but it is a tool that keeps the majority in check. | ||
| And I really don't care who's the majority, Democrats or Republicans. | ||
| I do want them in check. | ||
| And lastly, to all you Democrats out there, the Republicans don't control the Senate. | ||
| If they did, they would pass this resolution. | ||
| It's Democrat votes that are keeping the government shut down, that are keeping the poor people from getting their money, that are keeping our skies more dangerous. | ||
| They are using it as it's horrible. | ||
| It's horrible what they're doing. | ||
| Got your point out in California. | ||
| Just a couple comments from viewers via social media on this filibuster question. | ||
| This is Carol writing in on Facebook, the filibuster is the heart of the Senate. | ||
| It has been degraded for years. | ||
| If Republicans do this, if they eliminate it, they will regret it in 2027 and 2029. | ||
| This is Dennis saying, here's a crazy idea. | ||
| Since the Republicans clearly need votes from Democrats, perhaps they should consider working with the Democrats. | ||
| Compromise really is not a dirty word. | ||
| And one more from Jen. | ||
| How about Republicans show up to negotiate? | ||
| The Republicans want the bill signed as is, and Democrats don't agree with it. | ||
| They are willing to negotiate so the government can open. | ||
| This is a Republican temper tantrum is what Jen writes. | ||
| Just a few of your comments throughout this first hour of the Washington Journal. | ||
| Stick around, plenty more to talk about. | ||
| This morning, including a little later, we'll be joined by the Hudson Institute's Miles Yu to discuss future relationships with China and that trade deal between President Trump and Xi Jinping yesterday. | ||
| But first, the National Constitution Senator's Jeffrey Rosen joins us to discuss his new book, The Pursuit of Liberty, How Hamilton v. Jefferson Ignited the Lasting Battle Over Power in America. | ||
| Stick around. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Today on C-SPAN Ceasefire, at a moment of deep division in Washington, one congressman and one senator from opposing parties sit down for a frank and forward-looking conversation. | |
| California Democratic Congressman Scott Peters and Utah Republican Senator John Curtis come together to address the top issues, including the government shutdown, the future of health care, and America's role on the world stage. | ||
| They join host Dasha Burns. | ||
| Ceasefire, Bridging the Divide in American Politics. | ||
| at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| In his book, The Great River, Boyce Upholt talks about the history and geography of the Mississippi River. | ||
| And Sunday, on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A, he discusses how government-built infrastructures have transformed the landscape and ecosystem, and in turn, how the Mississippi has affected the population living along its banks. | ||
| I often talk about the Mississippi River being essentially a forgotten river at this point, right? | ||
| We know the name and we know about Mark Twain. | ||
| And most of us think of it as being this economic thing where we know there are big boats out there, but people don't know what it looks like, don't know how beautiful it is, don't realize that it is an iconic landscape. | ||
| It's as beautiful as Yellowstone or Yosemite in my mind. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Boyce Upholt with his book, The Great River, Sunday night at 8 Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. You can listen to Q&A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app. | |
| A critical election night on C-SPAN. | ||
| From coast to coast, key races that could shape America's future. | ||
| In New York City, a hard-fought mayor's race in the nation's largest city. | ||
| Governor's races heating up in New Jersey and Virginia. | ||
| And a California constitutional amendment that could shift the balance in Congress. | ||
| All the results, all of the speeches, coverage that's straight down the middle. | ||
| Election night, Tuesday at 6 p.m. Eastern, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Your democracy unfiltered. | ||
| 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. | ||
| Keep up with the day's biggest events with live streams of floor proceedings and hearings from the U.S. Congress, White House events, the courts, campaigns, and more from the world of politics, all at your fingertips. | ||
| Catch the latest episodes of Washington Journal. | ||
| Find scheduling information for C-SPAN's TV and radio networks, plus a variety of compelling podcasts. | ||
| The C-SPAN Now app is available at the Apple Store and Google Play. | ||
| Download it for free today. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| The National Constitution Center president and CEO Jeffrey Rosen joins us now. | ||
| His new book is titled The Pursuit of Liberty. | ||
| It follows his previous book, The Pursuit of Happiness. | ||
| Jeffrey Rosen, I think I know what happiness is. | ||
| What is liberty? | ||
| Liberty is the eternal and on during battle between Hamilton and Jefferson. | ||
| That's what I discovered in writing this book. | ||
| It was so much fun to look throughout American history and see how the competing positions of Hamilton and Jefferson on a couple of issues have defined us from the beginning. | ||
| In particular, their battles over national power and states' rights, executive power versus judicial power, liberal and strict construction of the Constitution, and democracy versus rule by elites. | ||
| Those four antitheses all go back to their battle over the Bank of the United States, and they were the cause of the rise of our first political parties, and they have defined us ever since. | ||
| On what liberty is, when the Constitution talks about being written to secure the blessings of liberty, and the Declaration talks about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are they using the same definition of liberty? | ||
| Are they talking about the same thing? | ||
| That's such a great question. | ||
| So the Declaration comes from many sources, but in particular, John Locke, who says we're born in a state of nature with rights of life, liberty, and property. | ||
| And the phrase blessings of liberty in the preamble to the Constitution, I recently discovered, it was written by Governor Morris, a great unappreciated hero, and it came from Cato's letters. | ||
| Trenchard and Gordon, in their opposition in the English Civil War, talked about the blessings of liberty. | ||
| So different sources, different centuries, but the point of this book is that although Hamilton and Jefferson agreed that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are natural rights, they disagreed about how to balance liberty and power in particular. | ||
| Securing liberty. | ||
| Securing the blessings of liberty. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| That was Jefferson's phrase. | ||
| How do we secure the blessings of liberty? | ||
| For Jefferson, every increase in power threatens liberty. | ||
| For Hamilton, increases in power can secure liberty. | ||
| And that's really basically a battle about the role of government. | ||
| Should it be centralized or decentralized? | ||
| National power versus states' rights. | ||
| And that's the basic vision throughout American history. | ||
| One quote or one paragraph from your book, and it paints a picture of the two views between Hamilton and Jefferson as strings sewn throughout the course of United States history. | ||
| You're right, the competing positions of Hamilton and Jefferson are like golden and silver threads woven throughout the tapestry of American history, sometimes side by side, sometimes crossing each other, and at critical moments pulling so far apart that they threaten to snap. | ||
| From the founding until today, the tug of war on both ends of the threads has sustained the productive tensions that keep American politics from descending into violence. | ||
| And whenever the threads have been pulled too far in one direction, both sides tumble over and the shooting begins. | ||
| What is this tug of war? | ||
| What are the two competing positions? | ||
| I'm so glad you picked that passage. | ||
| The image of golden and silver threads did come to mind, and I imagine throughout American history, both parties tugging on either sides of the threads. | ||
| I mean, the threads are how far to go over to national power and centralized government, or states' rights and decentralized government, or over toward democracy or rule by elites, or liberal versus strict construction of the Constitution. | ||
| Those are the antitheses. | ||
| And what's so exciting about American history and also striking is that both parties, Republican and Democrat, liberal and conservative, are invoking Hamilton and Jefferson by name at all the crucial turning points. | ||
| And they're constantly switching sides and starting with the moment that Jefferson, the great strict constructionist, abandons his principles to buy Louisiana and double the size of the United States, embracing the broad construction of the territory clause that he previously rejected. | ||
| That's happened throughout American history with political parties and presidents and Supreme Court judges. | ||
| But despite that flipping and crossing and tugging, they've maintained the essential gravitational force. | ||
| They've maintained the vital center. | ||
| And I said, when people abandon the principles, the shooting begins. | ||
| It's the rare moments in American history when you have John Calhoun saying that the Declaration is a self-evident lie and slavery is a positive good, or radical extremists on both sides rejecting the liberal idea. | ||
| That's when we have violence. | ||
| If these are golden and silver strings, do you find one being more valuable than the other? | ||
| Are you partial to the golden versus silver? | ||
| And if so, who's golden and who's silver? | ||
| Well, you know, the National Constitution Center, I'm not allowed to have any opinions whatsoever. | ||
| It's a nonpartisan institution. | ||
| But as a historian, I started off this book saying, I'm really not going to take sides on these initial battles. | ||
| Previous historians have been unapologetic partisans for one guy or the other. | ||
| Henry Cabot Lodge, a big Hamiltonian, is constantly dissing Jefferson for being a coward during the Revolutionary War. | ||
| Claude Bowers, FDR's favorite historian, exalts Jefferson and says Hamilton's the heuristic tool of urban elites. | ||
| I thought readers have to make up their own minds. | ||
| And there's another sense in which it would be silly to take sides with Hamilton and Jefferson because they're both essential. | ||
| They're enduring. | ||
| They're throughout American history. | ||
| There is one phrase, it's not in the book, but I love Gilbert and Sullivan, and there's a great line in one of their shows. | ||
| Every girl and every boy that's born into the world alive is either a little liberal or else a little conservative. | ||
| And that's the kind of essence of Hamilton and Jefferson. | ||
| They're constantly against each other. | ||
| We don't take sides. | ||
| We just have to let people make up their own minds. | ||
| For folks who might look at the title of your book and see this as a book about old dead white guys, what are the Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian fault lines that we see in this country today? | ||
| How does it apply in 2025? | ||
| My goodness, just listen to C-SPAN and you'll see how incredibly relevant the Hamilton and Jefferson battle is. | ||
| Let's start with the battle over executive power. | ||
| This is the huge question in this country. | ||
| Some people say that President Trump is a kind of Julius Caesar figure who's trying to consolidate all executive power in his own hands and subvert the separation of powers and undermine the Republic. | ||
| Others say he's Andrew Jackson, who's a populist trying to shrink the size of the federal government, attack elites, and resurrect democracy. | ||
| That battle goes back to the very beginning. | ||
| And the book begins, if I can tell the story, with the fact that both Hamilton and Jefferson are fearing a Julius Caesar character. | ||
| Shall I please? | ||
| Please, the dinner party that defined America. | ||
| It's just amazing. | ||
| It's in the room where it happened, which is not the one that the musical celebrates, where they move the Capitol to D.C. in exchange for assuming the national debt. | ||
| This is also at Jefferson's house, and it's a year later. | ||
| And the cabinet is gathered, Washington's away. | ||
| At some point in the evening, Hamilton looks up and says to Jefferson, who were those three guys on the wall? | ||
| And Jefferson says, those are portraits of the three greatest men in history, in my view, John Locke, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton. | ||
| And Hamilton pauses for a long time and then blurts out, the greatest man that ever lived was Julius Caesar. | ||
| And Jefferson writes in his diary that night, this proves that Hamilton is not only for a monarchy, but a monarchy bottomed on corruption. | ||
| And he goes on to found the whole Democratic-Republican Party in supposed opposition to the Caesarism, the monarchical ambitions of Hamilton and the Federalists. | ||
| And that fissure between ruled by elites or monarchy and democracy defines the parties for more than 100 years. | ||
| The story is so striking because as Ron Chernow says in his biography, Hamilton was probably joking. | ||
| He also fears Julius Caesar, but from below rather than above, he thinks that Caesar will flatter the people, persuade them to surrender liberty and install himself as a dictator. | ||
| And here's the relevance to today. | ||
| This leads to a disagreement between Jefferson and Hamilton about presidential term limits. | ||
| Jefferson's solution to a would-be Caesar is a one-year term limit for the president, so he won't be tempted to... | ||
| One year? | ||
| One year. | ||
| Oh, one term rather. | ||
| One four year term. | ||
| He won a four-year term. | ||
| If he can't run again, he won't be tempted to subvert elections. | ||
| Hamilton has the opposite solution, a president elected for life. | ||
| Because if the president's elected for life, then he can serve the public interest and won't be flattering the people. | ||
| That was radical at the convention. | ||
| There were gasps when he made this suggestion. | ||
| But I've learned that, in fact, at different times of the convention, Madison and Governor Morris supported life terms. | ||
| So he wasn't totally out there. | ||
| Nevertheless, that obviously went down. | ||
| Hamilton then in the Federalists defends the decision not to have life terms on the grounds that you might have an emergency that requires vigorous executive action. | ||
| For the rest of American history, some presidents have been attacked as Caesars. | ||
| In particular, Franklin Roosevelt, who dresses up as Julius Caesar at his birthday party in 1934, and Eleanor is dressed as a Roman matron, and they're kind of making fun of all the Caesar talk. | ||
| But then FDR runs for a third and then a fourth term. | ||
| And in 1945, after he dies, 80 days into his fourth term, Republicans take Congress and start to introduce the term limits amendment that becomes the 22nd Amendment. | ||
| It's ratified in 1951, and the debate over the amendment is the same as the Hamilton-Jefferson debate over Caesars. | ||
| And the successful proponents of the amendment say that a president shouldn't be able to extend his power indefinitely, and you have to maintain democracy and the rule of law. | ||
| So as always, it all goes back to the rumor it happened. | ||
| The book is The Pursuit of Liberty. | ||
| Jeffrey Rosen is our guest, the author. | ||
| The book came out last week, the subtitle, How Hamilton and Jefferson Ignited the Lasting Battle Over Power in America. | ||
| Taking your phone calls on phone lines as usual for Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. | ||
| We'll put those numbers on the screen as you're calling in. | ||
| Move to a different room of Monticello, the foyer of Monticello. | ||
| Why did Jefferson have a bust of Hamilton at his home? | ||
| Thanks for asking. | ||
| And it's so inspiring and striking to go there. | ||
| I was there a few months ago, and you can see it there today. | ||
| So he has a bust of Hamilton because after Hamilton dies, he thinks that he wants to gaze on his greatest rival. | ||
| And whenever he passed the bust and he was old, he would smile faintly, apparently, and say, opposed in life as in death. | ||
| And it's so moving to realize that for Jefferson, Hamilton is not some hated enemy to be destroyed, but a respected opponent to be engaged with. | ||
| And they both, although they've clashed politically, converged in their opposition to Aaron Burr, who both saw as a traitor, who was conspiring to foment insurrection in Spanish Louisiana and install himself as a dictator of Mexico. | ||
| Hamilton sides with Jefferson over Burr in the election of 1800, ensuring Jefferson's presidency, because although he doesn't like Jefferson, he thinks that he's a patriot and Burr is a traitor. | ||
| And he was right about that. | ||
| And in fact, Henry Adams, the historian, found a letter in the archives of the British ambassador where Burr is offering his services to Britain as the head of an insurrectionist movement in exchange for support for his dictatorial ambitions. | ||
| He was dead to rights, and Hamilton was right to fear him. | ||
| That's what leads to the fatal duel, because Burr gets wind of the fact that Hamilton is questioning his patriotism. | ||
| And in the end, it's a noble testament to Hamilton's willingness to put country and patriotism over partisanship. | ||
| In the book, you write about the stock market of reputations of America's founders and how they've changed over time. | ||
| When it comes to Hamilton and Jefferson and these oppositional ideas, is it an inverse relationship in terms of who's up and who's down in the stock market of the founders' reputations? | ||
| It is. | ||
| When one goes up, the other goes down, as David Wohlstreicher says in his book, Hamilton and Historians. | ||
| However, the movements of the market don't necessarily correspond to objective features in the economy. | ||
| It's just striking how a single major moment in pop culture can make all the difference. | ||
| So think of what happened. | ||
| Hamilton dies. | ||
| His stock is incredibly low. | ||
| He's the aristocrat who is conspiring to resurrect monarchy. | ||
| And in the era of good feeling leading up to the Civil War, everyone's a Jeffersonian. | ||
| And Henry Clay founds the Whig Party on the principles of Hamilton, but Jefferson is his hero. | ||
| And Lincoln stands in front of Independence Hall and says he'd rather be assassinated on this spot than abandon the principles of Jefferson in 1861. | ||
| Then James Garfield leads a Hamilton revival during Reconstruction. | ||
| He reads the works of Hamilton, which have been published by Hamilton's son. | ||
| And the Hamilton revival in the Gilded Age is accelerated by Theodore Roosevelt, who reads this book by Gertrude Atherton called Hamilton the Conqueror, being the true and romantic story of Hamilton. | ||
| It's a fictionalized novel, the Hamilton musical of its day. | ||
| It goes viral, and Roosevelt embraces Hamiltonian means for Jeffersonian ends, taking a wonderful phrase from the historian Herbert Crowley, and everyone's a Hamiltonian. | ||
| Then, boom, the stock market crash of 1929, Hamilton is toast. | ||
| And then Franklin Roosevelt reads this book called Jefferson versus Hamilton, Democracy versus Aristocracy. | ||
| And he decides to resurrect Jefferson as the prophet of democracy rather than limited government. | ||
| And he makes Jefferson the patron saint of the New Deal. | ||
| Is that when we first started getting the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinners in the Democratic Party? | ||
| They began earlier because it was on Jefferson's birthday, which is April 23rd, that Jackson made his famous speech, The Liberty and Union, It Must Be Preserved, siding with nationalism versus states' rights. | ||
| But when exactly that day also became Jefferson-Jackson, I'm not exactly sure, but I think that was the standard celebration for the Democratic Party for much of their history. | ||
| The problem was for the Democrats, the Democrats are the party of limited government and balanced budgets. | ||
| What's FDR going to do? | ||
| With what can only be called chutzpah, he decides to make Jefferson the patron saint of the New Deal, even though he's expanding the regulatory state in ways that would have made Jefferson cringe. | ||
| And he puts Jefferson on the nickel, and he builds the Jefferson Memorial, and the last speech that he writes the day he dies is on Jefferson Day, and it's April 23rd, and he quotes Jefferson, and he reinvents Jeffersonian as democracy. | ||
| Then, and we're almost up to the present, Ronald Reagan says that he left the Democratic Party in 1960 because it had abandoned the principles of Jefferson and limited government, and he reinvents the Republicans in the 80s as the limited government Jefferson rather than the democracy Jefferson. | ||
| And then this is really striking. | ||
| I had the honor of giving the Liberty Medal in Philadelphia at the NCC a few weeks ago to Ron Chernow and the Hamilton Musical. | ||
| And he told me in the audience that in 1998, when he decided to write the Hamilton biography, Hamilton's reputation was toast, and no one knew about him. | ||
| He was the aristocrat. | ||
| No one cared about him. | ||
| He publishes the book in 2004. | ||
| George W. Bush plugs it because he's a big reader. | ||
| And then comes the musical, which debuts at the White House during a White House poetry jam in 2009 with President Obama and then opens on Broadway in 2014. | ||
| And that is transformative for Hamilton. | ||
| And no longer the monarchical aristocrat, he's now the rapping champion of the American dream, a kind of icon for a multicultural age. | ||
| And he's just hot. | ||
| He's kind of in the ascendant. | ||
| And Jefferson's the slaveholder and the aristocratic white guy. | ||
| So that brings us to today. | ||
| And the fact that during the election of 2020, President Trump said that he was fighting the election to prevent Democrats from tearing down statues of Jefferson in particular. | ||
| And he stands in front of Mount Rushmore and defends Jefferson statues. | ||
| And Joe Biden said he decided to run because Trump in Charlottesville, the home of Jefferson, had said there are good people on both sides, shows us that the battle between Hamilton and Jefferson continues forever. | ||
| Those gold and silver strings throughout U.S. history. | ||
| The Pursuit of Liberty is the book. | ||
| Jeffrey Rosen is our guest, and the phone lines are open. | ||
| Steve's up first for you out of Ohio. | ||
| Line for Democrats. | ||
| Go ahead, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| Yeah, it's always nice to listen to Jeffrey Rosen. | ||
| It's always informative, and I'll definitely get the book. | ||
| And, you know, I guess the way I kind of look at it, this ongoing thing, with the tension of power, essentially, and I kind of wonder, really, whether the Constitution is becoming a little outdated in many, many respects. | ||
| You know, obviously, its origins were under a lot of presumptions at the time and compromises, of course. | ||
| You know, they didn't really think there would be political parties, political factions, and we're kind of stuck in a two-party competition with states competing amongst each other, with the Supreme Court, you know, doing things that maybe seem kind of extreme over time and currently. | ||
| And whereas other countries, you know, maybe have more modern mechanical processes involved in terms of the arrangement of how power is applied. | ||
| Well, Steve, let me take that point for Jeffrey Rosen. | ||
| It's a very powerful point. | ||
| It's a point that Hamilton and Jefferson might have debated. | ||
| They weren't sure that the experiment should work. | ||
| And certainly Jefferson, in particular, never expected this Constitution to endure unchanged. | ||
| He thought there should be a Constitutional Convention every 19 years so that the people could decide whether or not it was adequate to their purposes. | ||
| And the will of the majority should always prevail, Jefferson said. | ||
| And you should shuck off a coat that's too old or doesn't fit right. | ||
| So similarly, you should re-examine constitutional principles. | ||
| And Hamilton, when he dies, is very despondent about the future of the Constitution. | ||
| He says, days before he dies, sometimes I feel like this world is not made for me. | ||
| And he fears that the Constitution is not adequate to protect us against our real threat, which is democracy. | ||
| And he puts that in big letters. | ||
| He thinks that the mob and populist pressures are undermining liberty and property rights, and we may go the way of Greece and Rome. | ||
| So they were not at all certain that the system would survive. | ||
| However, Madison, who is always moderate in between Hamilton and Jefferson and is slightly more optimistic, views the Constitution as a way of framing our debates. | ||
| It's not going to solve those disagreements that you properly identify between liberty and power, but they'll ensure that they're resolved peaceably and through civil deliberation rather than through violence. | ||
| And that's why the Hamilton-Jefferson debate is so productive. | ||
| The caller wonders if the Constitution is outdated. | ||
| It's not in the Constitution, but it's certainly a topic of debate. | ||
| Do you think the filibuster is outdated? | ||
| Well, outdated, you know, the question is what purposes it was supposed to serve? | ||
| And is it, it's not a constitutional principle, it's a tradition. | ||
| And the tradition was meant to ensure that the Senate was deliberative and not a pure majoritarian body. | ||
| There's no question that the founders, both Hamilton and Jefferson, thought of the Senate as a more deliberative check on the popular House, Washington's famous metaphor of the saucer cooling the coffee. | ||
| And people can debate, and they do debate, whether the filibuster serves that purpose of deliberation or whether it just allows partisanship to rule. | ||
| And that's a good debate to have. | ||
| And President Trump's supercharging that debate in a series of true social posts last night we talked about in our first segment of the Washington Journal. | ||
| Taking your phone calls this morning with Jeffrey Rosen. | ||
| Chuck is in Syracuse, New York, Republican. | ||
| You're up next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I'm glad that Mr. Rosen is writing these books because I think today, especially in modern-day America, people are trying to marginalize great white males who created this country, people who wrote the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. | |
| And with all this talk about diversity and 1619 project, people don't talk in public schools or they don't teach this stuff. | ||
| You have to learn it from National Constitution Center, watching C-SPAN, reading books. | ||
| Why don't we have it in public schools? | ||
| And maybe Mr. Rosen can come up with a plan or a program to go into public schools and have like seminars or something like that, because they don't teach us in school so much a principle as the Second Amendment. | ||
| People say, well, it doesn't apply to clocks or AR-15s because they didn't have those back in the 1700s. | ||
| They had muskets. | ||
| So let's just throw out the Second Amendment. | ||
| And I think we're going down a dangerous path, but I'm glad that the great white male is still being talked about today. | ||
| That's Chuck in Syracuse, New York, Jeffrey Rosen. | ||
| Well, I'm so glad, Chuck, that you talked about a plan to bring all of this light and learning into schools. | ||
| And that's exactly what the National Constitution Center has. | ||
| And we've just launched online this amazing new civic toolkit for America 250 that all of you C-SPAN viewers have got to check out. | ||
| It brings together the greatest historians in America to talk about the big ideas of the Declaration and the Constitution. | ||
| Liberty with Robbie George, equality with Danielle Allen, government by consent with the great Gordon Wood. | ||
| Akhil Amar has annotated the entire Declaration clause by clause. | ||
| There are biographies of the framers by Carol Birkin. | ||
| And there's also a section of the Declaration across time. | ||
| Now, you talked about the ideas of great white men, and it's true that the founding was composed of great white men, but ever since then, their ideas have been invoked by great black men and women and people of different backgrounds. | ||
| And there's this phenomenal section of speeches invoking the Declaration throughout American history by David Walker in 1830, an address to black people across America, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ida B. Wells, all the way up to Martin Luther King on the mall. | ||
| So there's nothing, the founding is not limited to white men. | ||
| Its inspiring ideas of liberty, equality, and democracy have been invoked by men and women of all backgrounds throughout history. | ||
| But I completely agree, Chuck, it is urgently important for us to study the founding principles of the American idea, and that's exactly what the National Constitution Center is doing. | ||
| Fred, Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, Democrat, good morning. | ||
| You are next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir. | |
| In Project 2025, on page 555, it states that the president can send military troops into each state and take it over because of law and order, the ruse of disorder. | ||
| If this happens, the president can shut down the government. | ||
| He could take over and stop the vote, and he could become a dictator. | ||
| Now, Hamilton might think this is a great idea, but the president just run everything. | ||
| But the Constitution says that we have the right to all these rights, and that we can have the right to vote. | ||
| We have the right to select our leaders, and over a period of time, they can only stay a certain time. | ||
| The president wants to stay for a long time. | ||
| And I think what we're seeing here is a move toward dictatorship and away from democracy. | ||
| And the Constitution is not obsolete. | ||
| The Constitution is there to protect the people, and the filibuster is there to help protect the people also from a majority rule that may be contrary to the best interest of the people of the United States of America. | ||
| It's Fred in Pennsylvania. | ||
| Fred, you're so right that that concern of standing armies and presidents installing themselves as dictators for life is absolutely central to the founding. | ||
| And Jefferson is so afraid of it. | ||
| And you're also right that he thought that Hamilton was constantly conspiring to be the man on horseback who would lead a military coup and install himself as a dictator. | ||
| That charge was not accurate or fair, but that was the debate at the founding. | ||
| It's really striking how careful Congress has been throughout history to decline to authorize the president to deploy the military for ordinary domestic law enforcement. | ||
| And how in recent years, however, the Insurrection Act, championed ironically by Jefferson in 1807, I have to note here, Jefferson's always denouncing the danger of military takeover of the states. | ||
| Then he becomes president and there's an insurrection against his hated embargo in Vermont and suddenly he switches and discovers the virtue of strong executive power and gets Madison to authorize this expansion of the Insurrection Act, which is invoked to this day. | ||
| That had declined to authorize the military for domestic law enforcement, but around in the 21st century in particular, Congress increased it to give President George W. Bush more authority after Katrina. | ||
| They pulled it back a bit. | ||
| But the bottom line, we just did a really interesting podcast on this. | ||
| I do a We the People podcast every week that brings together a liberal and a conservative to debate the constitutional issue of the week. | ||
| It's possible that the act right now is broadened so sweepingly, is worded so sweepingly that it does, it could be used to authorize the military for domestic law enforcement. | ||
| The courts right now are examining that. | ||
| The Supreme Court has just asked for supplemental briefing. | ||
| But just to return to your basic insight, Chuck, you're so right that this is a foundational debate going back to Hamilton and Jefferson about whether or not the president would become a dictator if he could use the military for law enforcement. | ||
| And that's exactly what we're debating today. | ||
| Another foundational debate. | ||
| Here's a sentence from page 53 of your book. | ||
| Hamilton's and Jefferson's competing views on public debt came to define the differences between supporters and opponents of the federal government for the rest of American history. | ||
| Jefferson is Mr. Balance Budget, and he puts it in his first inaugural. | ||
| His main opposition to Hamilton's Bank of the United States is he thinks a funded debt would be immoral. | ||
| Hamilton thinks it's necessary to have an integrated financial system with enough confidence for foreign governments to invest in the U.S. | ||
| And that idea of limited government and balanced budget versus debt-funded expansion defines the parties for a long time. | ||
| Deborah's next out of Ohio, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| It's such a privilege to speak to both of you this morning. | ||
| I have visited the Constitution Mall and Monticello. | ||
| I attended college in Virginia. | ||
| And I've been to Monticello several times. | ||
| But I think today our founding fathers would be appalled that we have not, that we do not have some additional amendments to address some of the major issues of today. | ||
| One of the basic issues is, you think about our budget. | ||
| Here we have our government closed simply because of a filibuster. | ||
| And the reality is if we had a constitutional amendment that required us to do our job, which is regular order in our 13 appropriations, the amendment would be one page. | ||
| It would just say, when you don't finish the job, you have to use last year's budget and continue. | ||
| And nobody gets to leave Washington until you finish your job. | ||
| So I think there are several really practical common sense amendments. | ||
| It will never come from politicians because they like the power that some of these things give them, which would be an argument I think Jefferson would have. | ||
| And I'm wondering what you think of, it's going to have to be the people who push amendments to our Constitution. | ||
| Our politicians won't do it. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
| Thanks for the call from Ohio. | ||
| Thank you, Deborah. | ||
| What a wonderful comment. | ||
| So great that you attended college in Virginia. | ||
| I have to call out John now, who went to UVA. | ||
| And he's, as a Jeffersonian, he's been silent throughout this conversation because he's being neutral and in the good C-SPAN spirit. | ||
| But it's great that you had that privilege. | ||
| And Deborah, I think your idea that constitutional amendments are necessary to make Congress do its job is very Jeffersonian and also really insightful. | ||
| So much of our affliction today is coming from the fact that Congress is not doing its job and the separation of powers is not what either Hamilton or Jefferson intended. | ||
| Both of them thought that Congress would be the strongest and the most dangerous branch, sucking all power into its impetuous vortex, as Madison said. | ||
| The president is a constrained chief executive administering Congress's laws, and the judiciary is the least dangerous branch, deferring to both Congress and the president. | ||
| And today, because of the vast expansion of executive authority, which began in the progressive era with Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, and then the fact that Congress is not legislating, that's all out of whack. | ||
| It's not a partisan statement. | ||
| It's just a description of how the system has changed from what Hamilton and Jefferson envisioned. | ||
| Your suggestion that regular order should be required to pass budgets is a really good one. | ||
| Yuval Levin of the American Enterprise Institute suggests that requiring all bills to go through regular order so that they have to be deliberated by both sides and not allowing the speaker to rubber stamp all bills without debate could really help. | ||
| But you're thinking in exactly the kind of structural terms that are necessary to resurrect the foundational vision of the separation of powers. | ||
| And constitutional amendments are so consistent with what Jefferson hoped for. | ||
| So here's to the spirit of Thomas Jefferson. | ||
| I'll add that Deborah's right. | ||
| Monticello is a beautiful building to visit. | ||
| John's in Massachusetts, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for taking my call. | |
| Let's get away from supposedly, because we didn't forget about white, right? | ||
| We didn't forget about white. | ||
| Let's talk about the white race. | ||
| The same ones that flooded China with opium. | ||
| The same families, the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, the J.P. Morgans who took over the Federal Reserve Central Bank, who funded both sides of the war, okay? | ||
| We funded now, okay? | ||
| So we funded- John, bring me to the debate between Hamilton and Jefferson here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Finish. | |
| We funded Stalin. | ||
| Right now, we got a dictator in office who has to colonize South America because they haven't stopped in the past 400 and something years. | ||
| Got your point, John. | ||
| Dictator in office, come back to this concern over Caesar and why Caesar was such a boogeyman in the minds of the founding fathers. | ||
| All the founders read history, and in particular, a historian called Polybius. | ||
| And Polybius is a great Roman historian who has a theory called anacyclosis, which is a fancy word for the cycles of history. | ||
| And Polybius says that all pure forms of government degenerate into their opposites. | ||
| Monarchy degenerates into tyranny, aristocracy into oligarchy, and democracy into anarchy or the mob. | ||
| And that had happened to Greece and Rome, and it would happen ever since. | ||
| And that's why they want, Polybius wanted mixed forms of government so that the nobles could check the king who could also check the people. | ||
| And that's the point of a constitution, so that it can ensure that all the branches are in equipoise. | ||
| And it was just basically, they'd never seen a republic that didn't degenerate into its opposite. | ||
| And that's why they're so afraid of Caesar, the man on horseback, coming in to subvert the Republic. | ||
| So when Hamilton is defending himself to George Washington against Jefferson's charges that he had a secret love for Caesar, he writes this, you quote it, he's saying to Washington, no popular government was ever without its Catilines and its Caesars. | ||
| These are its true enemies, saying he really does oppose Caesar. | ||
| What's a Catiline? | ||
| Catiline was the treacherous Roman senator who is conspiring to subvert the Republic in a plot before the rise of Caesar. | ||
| And Cicero, a great hero, denounces Catiline before the Senate in the Catiline orations. | ||
| He gives a Philippic, which is denouncing Cataline, and that makes the Senate ostracize Catalan, and basically they put down the coup before it happened. | ||
| So is Cataline sort of the enemy from within, whereas Caesar is the strong man crossing the Rubicon with the army? | ||
| He is indeed. | ||
| That's exactly right. | ||
| And the question is: are you going to have the strong man from without who will impose dictatorship from above, or the Cataline from within who will subvert the system at its core? | ||
| Here in Washington, D.C., Jay, Line for Democrats, you are on with Jeffrey Rosen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John, and to you guests. | |
| I've got a quick question for you guests on this topic. | ||
| In fact, I've read some of the Charnell book, and I think everybody knows practically that, well known as Tributary, that Jefferson had slaves. | ||
| He fathered children by Sally Hemings. | ||
| I don't think a lot of people know that Hamilton, in fact, was one of the first abolitionists who was opposed to slavery. | ||
| I'd like to have your guests elaborate on the two men's positions on the original sin of our Democratic Constitution Republic, slavery. | ||
| What would each man's position in his own words? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you so much for that crucially important question. | ||
| And you're absolutely right that Hamilton's abolitionism is one of the noblest parts of his legacy. | ||
| And he helps to found a society for abolition, joins with Benjamin Franklin, who petitions Congress for the end of slavery and believes that the South's devotion to the slave occracy is both the source of disunion and of great immorality. | ||
| And that split between Hamilton and the Federalists and Jefferson and the Democrats is fundamentally over slavery. | ||
| Jefferson, as you say, not only intensely betrayed his own principles of liberty by ensuring that at Monticello he was served by his own children. | ||
| The people who are surrounding him and serving him and making his lifestyle possible at Monticello are his own kids by Sally Hemmings. | ||
| He frees them because he promises her that he will on his death, but he frees no one else and his entire enslaved population is sold to pay his debts. | ||
| And despite his constant denunciation of debt, he's lived so far beyond his means that parents are separated from kids revealing his hypocrisy. | ||
| And furthermore, although he always insists that slavery should end at some point in the distant future, the deadline keeps receding. | ||
| And by the end of his life, Jefferson is actually attacking the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise, which forbids the spread of slavery, and he despairs about civil war. | ||
| So it's an important contrast that you invite me to draw between Jefferson, whose views on slavery becomes more calcified and less liberal as he grows older, and Hamilton, who comes to denounce slavery with passion. | ||
| The book is The Pursuit of Liberty. | ||
| The previous book was The Pursuit of Happiness. | ||
| Is the third book in the trilogy of The Pursuit of Life? | ||
| It's the Pursuit of Union, as it happens. | ||
| It is a trilogy, and I'm so excited. | ||
| It's going to be how James Madison and four forgotten founders define the Constitutional Convention and America. | ||
| How can we have forgotten founders? | ||
| Well, how could it so important to remember them? | ||
| So think about the guys who are most influential at the convention. | ||
| We know Madison, and there's Hamilton in Washington, but who are the next most influential guys? | ||
| And I sort of spent some time reading last year and trying to figure out who to include at the top of the list. | ||
| Then I just found a list of the guys who spoke most frequently at the Constitutional Convention. | ||
| And at the top of the list is Gouvernor Morris spoke more frequently than anyone else, then Madison, then James Wilson of Pennsylvania, then Roger Sherman of Connecticut, and then the South Carolina guys led by John Rutledge. | ||
| So it turns out that those four guys, Morris, Wilson, Sherman, and Rutledge, do more to define the major compromises in the convention between national power and states' rights, democracy versus elites and slavery than anyone else. | ||
| So I'm going to tell the story of the convention through the lens of these four forgotten founders and what their views were about union. | ||
| When can we expect that book? | ||
| Well, in about two years, I'm in the middle of reading. | ||
| It's so exciting to just wake up every morning and read the primary sources. | ||
| And I want to share with you my enthusiasm. | ||
| And C-SPAN viewers, I know what great lovers of history you are. | ||
| And you're on the path of lifelong learning. | ||
| So just pick a founder and read their primary sources because all the primary sources are online. | ||
| I've just been reading the letters of Gouvernor Morris during the French Revolution, all of which are free and online. | ||
| And in addition to being incredibly racy and very exciting because of all of his affairs and his dramatic life, it's the most incredible eyewitness account of the French Revolution from our ambassador over there denouncing the excesses of the French terror because of their refusal to embrace a liberal constitution. | ||
| And he actually wrote a draft of a constitution for King Louis XVI before he was executed. | ||
| It's an incredible vision of the difference between the American and the French Revolution through the lens of constitutionalism, written by the guy who actually wrote the Constitution. | ||
| Gouvernor Morris for the Committee of Style writes the final language, including the preamble. | ||
| So it's just, the more you learn, the more you realize you don't know. | ||
| And learning the life stories of these people, which are so dramatic and vivid and exciting, is wonderful. | ||
| And I cannot wait to finish the book. | ||
| Is Gouverneur a title for governor? | ||
| So it's actually his mother's family name was Gouverneur. | ||
| I've recently learned he pronounced it Gouvenier. | ||
| So if you want to talk about Gouveni, Gouvenier is just his first name. | ||
| He was not called Gouvey as a kind of nickname, but he's Gouvenier, Morris. | ||
| Let me try to get one more call in in the time we have. | ||
| Randy in the Bluegrass State, Republican. | ||
| You're on with Jeffrey Rosen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Wow, there's so many subjects and topics to bring up, but I know we're limited on time. | ||
| Two of the things is slavery and taxation. | ||
| I think the founding fathers had nothing, no idea or conception of what we are today. | ||
| We're so far from the Constitution. | ||
| We're now ruled by corporations as far as being everyone being in the tax code. | ||
| And also with slavery, that makes everyone a slave, the tax code does, because it steals their stuff. | ||
| That's what slavery is. | ||
| They steal your freedoms, rights, liberties, and your sweat, your money. | ||
| And no one even considers this anymore. | ||
| And most of the founders and signers of the Constitution were Christian people. | ||
| And they would never have agreed to have the religious or the Christians or any religious person that was constricted by any form of laws from speaking out against political and social issues. | ||
| And since 1954, when LBJ put that in with the Johnson Amendment, you can't, churches and Christians, the government owns them now. | ||
| And they can't speak out about those things about the inclusion code. | ||
| Everything in the Bible is against communism. | ||
| That's what we are. | ||
| And that's what the tax code does to us. | ||
| And slavery, please remember, slavery is something that is stolen from others. | ||
| Randy, got your point. | ||
| Running short on time. | ||
| Give me a chance to respond. | ||
| A great point, and Jefferson couldn't have said it better. | ||
| He was passionately opposed to the monopolies and corporations. | ||
| And in fact, Madison introduced an amendment to the Constitution that would have forbidden Congress from setting up corporations and monopolies with exclusive privileges. | ||
| And that crusading opposition to the curse of bigness, as the great Jeffersonian Louis Brandeis called it, defined the Democratic Party for much of its history. | ||
| And some people, Randy, agree with you that we should get it back. | ||
| The latest book is The Pursuit of Liberty: How Hamilton v. Jefferson Ignited the Lasting Battle Over Power in America. | ||
| Jeffrey Rosen is the author. | ||
| He's been on the C-SPAN networks 232 times over the years, dating back to 1986. | ||
| But September 8th of this year was, I think, the first time we hear you sing at an event about classical writers' influence on America's founders. | ||
| You can find that in the C-SPAN archive at American History TV. | ||
| And he ain't bad. | ||
| Jeffrey Rosen, thanks for the time this morning. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| It's always an honor to be on C-SPAN. | ||
| Coming up a little later this morning, we'll hear from Utah Republican Blake Moore about the 31st day of the government shutdown. | ||
| But first, the Hudson Institute's Miles Yu joins us for a discussion on that meeting between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping yesterday. | ||
|
unidentified
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Today, on C-SPAN's Ceasefire, at a moment of deep division in Washington, one congressman and one senator from opposing parties sit down for a frank and forward-looking conversation. | |
| California Democratic Congressman Scott Peters and Utah Republican Senator John Curtis come together to address the top issues, including the government shutdown, the future of health care, and America's role on the world stage. | ||
| They join host Dasha Burns. | ||
| Ceasefire, Bridging the Divide in American Politics. | ||
| Today, at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold new original series. | ||
| This Sunday with our guest Pulitzer Prize winner, Stacey Schiff, author of biographies, including Ben Franklin, Samuel Adams, and Cleopatra. | ||
| She joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein. | ||
| So writing a second book on Franklin, you must admire him. | ||
| I assume you don't want to write two books on somebody you don't admire, but you do admire him. | ||
| I feel as if he is in all ways admirable in so many ways, just the essential DNA of America. | ||
| His voice is the voice of America, literally. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Watch America's Book Club with Stacey Schiff. | |
| Sundays at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific. | ||
| Only on C-SPAN. | ||
| In September 1975, 17 days apart, two women, one in Sacramento and the other in San Francisco, attempted to assassinate President Gerald Ford. | ||
| The first attempt on September the 5th came from Annette Squeaky Fromm, the Charles Manson follower, spent over 30 years in prison, is out on parole, and is 76 years old. | ||
| The other attempt came on the non-entrance side of St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco on September the 24th, 1975. | ||
| The shooter, Sarah Jane Moore, served 32 years in prison and died almost 50 years to the day on September the 24th, 2025. | ||
| Author Jerry Spieler wrote the book Housewife Assassin in 2009. | ||
| She talked to and exchanged letters with Ms. Moore on several occasions. | ||
| Here's her up-to-date story about the woman who tried to kill President Ford. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Author Jerry Spieler with her book Housewife Assassin, The Woman Who Tried to Kill President Ford on this episode of BookNotes Plus with our host Brian Lamb. | |
| BookNotes Plus is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| America marks 250 years, and C-SPAN is there to commemorate every moment. | ||
| From the signing of the Declaration of Independence to the voices shaping our nation's future, we bring you unprecedented all-platform coverage, exploring the stories, sights, and spirit that make up America. | ||
| Join us for remarkable coast-to-coast coverage, celebrating our nation's journey like no other network can. | ||
| America 250. | ||
| Over a year of historic moments. | ||
| only on the C-SPAN networks. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| A conversation now on President Trump's meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping yesterday. | ||
| Miles Yu is our guest. | ||
| He's currently the Hudson Institute's China Center Director, joining us this morning in the wake of that agreement yesterday, the trade agreement. | ||
| From what we know on that trade agreement, how would you describe what both sides walked away with yesterday? | ||
| Well, it wasn't actually not an agreement. | ||
| It's a truce. | ||
| There are many ways to describe the U.S.-China relationship, right? | ||
| It's a competition, rivalry, or more likely, war. | ||
| Let's just say make us feel more robust. | ||
| It's a war. | ||
| So it was not a settlement of the war. | ||
| It is a truce, ceasefire. | ||
| Both sides agree for their own interest to delay trigger pulling. | ||
| So they're going to regroup and come back to final settlement. | ||
| Nothing is signed there, by the way, yesterday. | ||
| So it did not solve the two scourges of the global economy. | ||
| Number one is China's staggering manufacturing overcapacity that drives global competition out of the equation and by manufacturing low prices. | ||
| And the second problem is China's stronghold on key aspect of global supply chain. | ||
| So that is the real problem. | ||
| And that key aspect being rare earth minerals? | ||
| That's one of the very important ones. | ||
| So China has strongholds on many other things too. | ||
| Such as, for example, some of the key technologies, right? | ||
| What China calls the new platforms. | ||
| They want to control, for example, very hard on chip making, right, and other things. | ||
| And also they want to control on drones. | ||
| They also have control on some of the critical minerals that the West does have enough, but it's very difficult to process, right? | ||
| So that's the thing. | ||
| And trade dominance, obviously, is very important. | ||
| So, however, there's one very important aspect of President Trump's trip to Asia, particularly to Korea and Japan. | ||
| That is it shows Americans' leadership. | ||
| Secretary Person has a very good perspective that this is not just the U.S. versus China. | ||
| This is China versus the rest of the world. | ||
| So the problem is they're been there for a long, long, long time. | ||
| All the countries realize this. | ||
| The problem is we need the leader to rally everybody around. | ||
| So that's why President Trump's trip to ASEAN countries, to Tokyo, to Seoul, received enthusiastic response from the countries. | ||
| They're all right around the United States. | ||
| That actually is very key. | ||
| Well, this is what President Trump chose to focus on when he talked to reporters aboard Air Force One after that meeting with Xi Jinping yesterday. | ||
| This is about a minute and a half. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We have a deal. | |
| Now every year we'll renegotiate the deal, but I think the deal will go on for a long time, long beyond the year. | ||
| We'll negotiate at the end of a year, but all of the rare earth has been settled. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And that's for the world. | |
| I mean, you know, worldwide. | ||
| Because you could really say this was a worldwide situation, not just the U.S. situation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So we continue to produce the rare earths and buy the rare earths and everything else. | |
| You know, when you see from other countries, but China is that whole situation, that roadblock is gone now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's no roadblock at all on rare earth. | |
| That will hopefully disappear from our vocabulary for a little while. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So they got a one-year pause on the policy they announced. | |
| It's a one-year agreement, and we'll extend it after a year, like we do. | ||
| It's a one-year deal that will, I think, be very routinely extended this time as much. | ||
| Miles, you, on the timing of this deal and how long it lasts, repeatedly saying it's a one-year deal. | ||
| Why is that important? | ||
| Is that something we wanted? | ||
| Did we want a longer deal? | ||
| Well, because we cannot make China committed to a firm signed deal. | ||
| It's very difficult. | ||
| President Trump was right. | ||
| I mean, this is a long-going process. | ||
| This is the fifth run of trade talk with China, just since the Liberation Day. | ||
| So in April. | ||
| So China's basic approach and America's approach to this kind of trade deal, any kind of negotiation, they're very different. | ||
| For the United States, we want specific deliverables in any of the negotiations. | ||
| Either, you know, fentanyl, rare earth, trade barriers. | ||
| So those things are very specific. | ||
| China's approach to all negotiations tend to be very metaphysical or abstract. | ||
| So they say the grand new things and in the end there's very little implementation. | ||
| By the way, you asked me about what other aspects of China has stronger hold on the West, on the United States. | ||
| In addition to rare earth, pharmaceuticals, for example, is very, very difficult to get away from the Chinese cheap medicines. | ||
| So in this case, all the agreement that we saw out of South Korea yesterday, they purchased, promised to purchase 23 million metric tons of soybeans. | ||
| All of this have already agreed five years ago in the phase one trade negotiate deal signed in January 2020. | ||
| None of it has been implemented. | ||
| So we're going through this in a circle right now. | ||
| So what I think we have to do is really to realize the root cause of the problem with China, to have a long-term economic strategy. | ||
| You know, China is a surplus country. | ||
| It runs an enormous trade surplus with the rest of the world. | ||
| That is China's strength, but also China's vulnerabilities, because surplus needs markets. | ||
| United States occupy a lion's share of global consumption market, something like 30%, 40%. | ||
| So that's what President Trump is doing, I think, is some sort of the trade contentment to rally the world to basically make China make sure that you have to behave according to market rules. | ||
| Otherwise, we're going to close the market to you. | ||
| Miles, you is our guest of the Hudson Institute. | ||
| You can join this conversation about U.S.-China relations on phone line split as usual by political party. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| As folks are calling in, explain what the Hudson Institute is, what the China Center is. | ||
| Do you have a specific view on China and the Chinese Communist Party? | ||
| Hudson Institute is a nonprofit research institute. | ||
| We call it a think tank. | ||
| I don't really like the phrase think tank. | ||
| You know, think tank, you think inside the tank. | ||
| You really think that much. | ||
| So I would say Hudson Institute distinguished itself not necessarily as a think tank, rather as something like, for lack of better words, a think campus or think park, where you think in the open. | ||
| You constantly embrace the breeze of fresh ideas. | ||
| And also to meet some other challenges, right? | ||
| So as the founder of Hudson Institute said, Herman Kahn said, you know, do the, to think the unthinkable, which is a very out-of-box thinking. | ||
| China Center is one of its several research centers. | ||
| I'm head of that. | ||
| So we are independent. | ||
| We don't have any particular view. | ||
| We have strong views, but not necessarily based on partisan. | ||
| We have not, by the way, China Center has not received so far any funding from any government, foreign or domestic. | ||
| So just make sure to maintain our independence. | ||
| So that's basically, we have a view on China. | ||
| I think, you know, our views are known as hawkish, but it's not necessarily true because it's a combination of principle and realism. | ||
| You also served in the first Trump administration in the State Department. | ||
| What was your role there? | ||
| So I was detailed from the U.S. Navy to the State Department to serve as the senior China policy advisor to Secretary Pompeo on its policy planning staff, which is kind of an internal think tank for the Secretary. | ||
| We basically re-evaluated all the existing and previous China policies. | ||
| We did quite a few revolutionary moves over there. | ||
| And I think that policy reset under the leadership of President Trump in the first term, and also particularly Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, that policy was a reversal of many of the previous ones. | ||
| That policy has received, I would say, bipartisan support. | ||
| Even during the four years of Biden interregnum, we basically did not deviate away from our policy. | ||
| So I think that's bipartisan. | ||
| This bipartisan sense about China in the last six, seven years is backed by American popular sentiment. | ||
| Because right now, Americans hold about 80% and the over negative feelings about China. | ||
| That is a sort of fundamental element of American democracy. | ||
| Lawmakers, you cannot find really anybody in Congress who sort of vote in a negative way against all the China-related bills and acts in Congress, which is good. | ||
| Now's a good time to call in. | ||
| If you have questions about U.S.-China relations, U.S. trade in the Pacific region, phone lines are open to do so. | ||
| This is Will up first out of Pennsylvania, our second caller from Camp Hill, Pennsylvania today. | ||
| Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'd like to say to your guests, I'd like to apologize on behalf of our leader at times, even when the COVID situation was going on, that, you know, he said some rude things about the leader and the country itself. | ||
| And furthermore, that China has made so many inventions, not just for us, but throughout the world, that it is seen as a superpower. | ||
| And that's why this country here is so threatened by it. | ||
| But at the same time, we want to work along with the China-U.S. relationships to the point where we understand, you know, these powers can make life a lot easier globally if we learn how to sit up here and connect our inventions, our methods of life, and also correct our wrongs and rights of what we're doing or slacking in each other's country. | ||
| That's Will in Pennsylvania. | ||
| What do you want to pick up on? | ||
| Well, I think, you know, thank you Will for the very typically American sentiment, and that is to be very critical of our own government in many ways. | ||
| But I will say this. | ||
| I was in the first Trump administration. | ||
| I don't think President Trump really invented all these names, what you call probably you apologize for. | ||
| There's no reason for our apology because China invented this phrase that affiliate the geography to the virus. | ||
| I assume you're referring to that. | ||
| China called the Wuhan virus the first. | ||
| So President Trump called China virus was in response to Chinese government spokesperson's absurd assertion that the COVID virus came from the U.S. Army biodefense lab in Fort Dictionary, Maryland. | ||
| So he was really outraged by that. | ||
| So to affiliate China with the outbreak, the place of the virus was not really racist and disrespectful. | ||
| It was just a reality. | ||
| So about, you are right. | ||
| I think you make a very good point about the Chinese people are good. | ||
| Chinese people are very, very good and very, just like anybody, like Americans, they want the same thing that we want, liberty, freedom, and economic prosperity. | ||
| The Chinese government, however, is different. | ||
| So I think we cannot really lump them together, the Chinese government and Chinese people. | ||
| And I think it is that critical distinction that marks the beginning of the new China policy. | ||
| U.S. relations with China is not just bilateral, just not between Chinese government and American government. | ||
| It's also trilateral between U.S., Chinese government, and also Chinese people. | ||
| So that's something that Chinese government doesn't want to see. | ||
| To New York, this is Tony, Line for Democrats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| First of all, I wouldn't believe Donald Trump. | ||
| He's the biggest liar we've ever had in the history of the presidency. | ||
| I wouldn't trust Qi either. | ||
| He's reneged on several deals that he supposedly made with our government officials. | ||
| By the way, why wasn't Taiwan discussed at all during this presentation? | ||
| Well, think about it. | ||
| Do you think Donald Trump was going to go and talk about Taiwan when he doesn't even know what the hell Taiwan's about? | ||
| Miles Yu, the headline from the Hill, Trump and Xi didn't discuss Taiwan or Russian oil or black well chips. | ||
| Why didn't they discuss Taiwan? | ||
| It's actually a good thing because we don't want to talk about Taiwan. | ||
| It's about trade. | ||
| It's about the economics, right? | ||
| So China always used Taiwan as an excuse to avoid talking about real issues. | ||
| Every time you schedule some meetings with the Chinese leaders, either it's on Iran, Russia, North Korea, agree upon this agenda. | ||
| And then they will come in and spend 20, 30 minutes talking about Taiwan, which is basically a non-issue in the agenda. | ||
| So this has always been the case. | ||
| So President Trump, and through his cabinet secretaries, sent a very strong signal to Chinese leaders, do not stone wall or back foot drag on real issues, trade, right? | ||
| Fentanyl, rare earth, by talking excessively about Taiwan. | ||
| So that's why Taiwan never came on the table. | ||
| So I don't think it's a bad thing. | ||
| Taiwan is Taiwan, as President Trump famously said. | ||
| And I think, you know, Taiwan is Taiwan, China is China. | ||
| You know, trade is trade. | ||
| That has to be separated. | ||
| I think it's a good thing that we don't talk about Taiwan because Taiwan is very, very important for its own sake. | ||
| How close do you think we are to a hot war when it comes to a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan? | ||
| That's actually entirely up to China, but we're getting ready for any potential conflicts over there. | ||
| And I think, you know, U.S. policy toward Taiwan and Chinese decision, actually, let me put it this way. | ||
| China's decision to launch a war on Taiwan is mostly depends on four reasons, four factors. | ||
| Number one, intent. | ||
| Number two, capabilities. | ||
| Number three, cost. | ||
| Number four, opportunities. | ||
| So China has two, the first two, they definitely intend to take Taiwan. | ||
| They definitely believe they have the capability to take Taiwan, but it's a lot of two that were not decided by China. | ||
| That is a cost. | ||
| We have made China very aware of the fact that the cost of taking Taiwan militarily will be prohibitive. | ||
| And they're going to pay heavy prices for that. | ||
| This is a global message, not just the United States. | ||
| Do you think China saw it as more costly a year ago? | ||
| under the Biden administration than it is than it would be today under the Trump administration or is the cost factor changed at all in your mind? | ||
| Well, the cost factor is exponentially increased right now. | ||
| I'm sure President Biden was very firm on expressing American resolve to defend Taiwan militarily. | ||
| He said like four or five times. | ||
| But then in the meantime, he also tried to seek Chinese cooperation on climate and other agendas. | ||
| So China looked at that as a weakness. | ||
| So that's why China really, really sort of reacted very, very negatively, provocatively. | ||
| Speaker Nancy Pelosi went to Taiwan. | ||
| China went crazy. | ||
| If Speaker Klose went to Taiwan under Trump administration, there's no way China would have reacted that way because they always want to push the envelope and conduct a branch measure to force America to back down. | ||
| So I think right now the cost that we made China be aware is going to be very, very big, not only financial, militarily, they cannot guarantee a total win, right? | ||
| Just like Russia in Ukraine. | ||
| So we make that very clear. | ||
| We have very good military leadership in Indo-Pacific. | ||
| We have very good leadership in the American military establishments. | ||
| Secretary Hex has said repeatedly, our job is to peace through strength. | ||
| So determinism is the key of the Trump administration. | ||
| I think that's actually a good way. | ||
| The last factor for China to decide the war is opportunity. | ||
| So we have to really conduct opportunity denial to China. | ||
| How do you do that? | ||
| Well, for example, we have to really make sure that our commitment to defend Taiwan is solid. | ||
| If President Trump said tomorrow, defense of Taiwan is none of our business, right? | ||
| And then that's opportunity for China to go in. | ||
| So that's very key. | ||
| And not only that, our allies in the region always have to make sure this is not just Taiwanese business because China has territory disputes, not only with Taiwan. | ||
| They have territory with pretty much everybody in the neighborhood. | ||
| South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, of course, Vietnam, India, the Philippines, Malaysia. | ||
| They have a lot of, so Taiwan is just the first of the China regression for China. | ||
| If Taiwan is gone on the Chinese side, everybody will feel insecure. | ||
| That's one reason why when President Trump stands very firm on China, on Taiwan, everybody really runs American leadership. | ||
| So that's why I think it's very important that we have total control of the cost and the opportunity side of that. | ||
| So the schedule for China to launch the war militarily against Taiwan is not entirely their hand. | ||
| We can control that too. | ||
| So it really takes a very wise and determined leadership to make that happen. | ||
| Tony is in Flower Town, Pennsylvania, Independent. | ||
| Tony, you're on with Miles Yu. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I just wanted to make Americans aware that China has close to 1,500 billionaires. | ||
| America has approximately 800. | ||
| I think that it's really important that you kind of go back to the election of Bill Clinton, George Bush, and when Ross Perot was running, and he said that NAFTA was going to be a giant sucking sound, and all the jobs were going to go to China. | ||
| Looks like Ross Perot was pretty smart, and China's doing really well. | ||
| And then it's weird because China didn't attack America. | ||
| The business elite, the oligarchs, the 1%, the billionaires sold out America. | ||
| They betrayed the working class in this country, and they continue to do so. | ||
| And then you have these guys from think tanks that are funded by billionaires, wealth, concentrated wealth, privilege just oozing with it, out of touch. | ||
| Talking about China's a threat. | ||
| China's not running around the world attacking other countries. | ||
| They're not. | ||
| The U.S. is. | ||
| If you look at the number of countries the U.S. has bombed, continues to threaten and bomb. | ||
| This man is out of his mind. | ||
| What is he talking about? | ||
| China's a threat. | ||
| China's using soft power, state power. | ||
| They're doing infrastructure projects all over the world. | ||
| They're not attacking and bombing people. | ||
| That's what we do. | ||
| Got your point, Tony. | ||
| Miles, give you a chance to respond. | ||
| I mean, I think, of course, the United States is a 50-50 country. | ||
| You know, you have 50 countries going on the conservative side because they're on the liberal side. | ||
| You know, this is not just Donald Trump. | ||
| President Biden will also go along with Trump line of getting tough on China. | ||
| So even though the method is questionable, as I said earlier, so I challenge your number about Chinese billionaires. | ||
| China does not have nearly as many billionaires, millionaires in the United States. | ||
| You know what the Chinese people, this wealthy Chinese are doing right now? | ||
| They're trying every way possible to get out of China. | ||
| That's because there's no private property protection in China. | ||
| When you get rich in China, the government can come in, confiscate your wealth at any moment. | ||
| Think about Jack Ma, right, and many other people. | ||
| So there's no guarantee of your wealth will be protected. | ||
| That's why there's an enormous capital flight in China. | ||
| Everyone's get out. | ||
| You go to New York, you go to Tokyo, you go to Singapore. | ||
| It's all Chinese wealthy people. | ||
| Tokyo is like a Chinatown right now because there's no confidence in the Chinese Communist Party and particularly its economic policy, which has ruined China. | ||
| You talk about China's building Bayon Road initiative. | ||
| This is one of the things I talk about, China's overcapacity. | ||
| China's overcapacity was entirely the creation of the command economy. | ||
| In normal capitalist market economy, overcapacity will kill all the factories and all the industries because you cannot really sustain the financial losses. | ||
| So overcapacity normally you create the economic depression, right? | ||
| You create the massive unemployment. | ||
| China is not different. | ||
| China is different. | ||
| They use enormous state subsidy and the government policies to create these gigantic overcapacity companies and they export all the overcapacity to the rest of the world. | ||
| Chinese overcapacity has killed Chinese domestic market. | ||
| Chinese, there's no inflation percentage because there's decreasing. | ||
| There's no money to buy. | ||
| Consumption is dead in China. | ||
| There's no sort of investment in there. | ||
| So that's why they want to transfer that kind of disastrous policy from inside China to the rest of the world. | ||
| That's why the matter could be very serious. | ||
| Now, Ben Road Initiative, yes, they build all the projects through Chinese loans. | ||
| The Chinese BRI loans normally is a dead trap. | ||
| Normally, you get the commercial loan in the West at 30 years, interest about 4.5%, with the grace period about like three or four years. | ||
| The Chinese loans are almost like 10 years instead of 30. | ||
| And the grace period is about one year or less. | ||
| So the likelihood for this country who had enormous Chinese loans to default are very, very high, much higher. | ||
| And why would they want them to default? | ||
| Because that's where China actually is controlled. | ||
| Once you default, Chinese can claim the collaterals, which normally are your sovereign assets. | ||
| The land, the ports, is happening globally, everywhere. | ||
| You go to Africa. | ||
| China has indebted a lot of people. | ||
| Angola, Egypt, Kenya. | ||
| Everywhere you go, where you got a lot of Chinese BRI project or loans is a political crisis. | ||
| Every election resolves around the Chinese relationship, right? | ||
| So you also, Chinese BRI is a very project, many of them is predatory. | ||
| So that's why you got a mass riot in countries like Kenya and Ghana against Chinese investment companies because they killed the local economies. | ||
| So this is this is, I'm not saying there's nothing good about BRI. | ||
| Yes, they build the projects over there, but a lot of stuff, Chinese BRIs came from the Chinese manufacturing capability, overcapacity in China. | ||
| China built a lot of skyscrapers more than anybody in the world. | ||
| Build a very good high-speed railway system inside China. | ||
| But they're not based on market needs. | ||
| Overcapacity. | ||
| I mean, they'll build all the skyscrapers. | ||
| The occupancy is very low. | ||
| Most of them are losing money. | ||
| Chinese high-speed railway system is very impressive. | ||
| Everybody will be impressed by that. | ||
| But most of them are losing money. | ||
| So, I mean, it cannot be sustained. | ||
| So you transfer that kind of economic model to the rest of the world. | ||
| Sooner or later, we're all be doomed. | ||
| Let me head to Oceanside, California. | ||
| Ann is waiting. | ||
| Independent. | ||
| And you're on with Miles Yu. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Mr. Yu. | |
| I love you. | ||
| Let's start that way. | ||
| Are you there? | ||
| I'm here. | ||
| I feel loved. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I want to embrace the fact and point quickly to some large structural moments in China that I've heard about. | ||
| And I want to check out the reality of those structural moments. | ||
| The first one that I'm very concerned about is the empty city concept, where these giant incensible buildings housing no one at this time have been somehow miraculously erected. | ||
| Who pays for that and why is that happening? | ||
| How is that? | ||
| How is that? | ||
| How is China taking the big hit with the high-speed rail that you just represented as having very little use? | ||
| And the trains, as I understand it, go 200 miles per hour. | ||
| Now, if there are anything like the trains here, those trains are going at two ripping around at 200 miles per hour with maybe a few passengers. | ||
| And if the rail economics with the train going back and forth as they pass each other, that's a setup for disaster. | ||
| I just don't want people going on those trains. | ||
| Well, and let me take those and give those topics to Miles Yu. | ||
| Okay, maybe it's not a good place to talk about high-speed railway in California because it's long as it's been a disaster economically and policy-wide too. | ||
| Because we cannot simply eliminate the Chinese model. | ||
| Chinese economic models of political ideologies because Chinese country party built itself as an infallible, invincible, can do anything. | ||
| So that's why they like this kind of megalomania project to showcase the Chinese Communist Party's infallibility and invisibility. | ||
| They do all kind of crazy things. | ||
| Mao Zhe don't kill all the spirals in China. | ||
| Xi Jimingh wants to eliminate every single COVID case in China. | ||
| That's why COVID-0 came in. | ||
| So they want to do the impossible and at the expense of Chinese people. | ||
| So this is one of the problems. | ||
| Now you mentioned about the Chinese ghost cities. | ||
| China built an enormous amount of real estate projects because China is in its blind and mad pursuit of GDP. | ||
| Now, GDP is what? | ||
| GDP is economic activities. | ||
| As long as you're constantly building, constructing, and then you've got GDP artificial high numbers. | ||
| So that's why China has to build a lot of real estate projects and then destroy them, build it again and again and again. | ||
| So that's why you have... | ||
| I challenge anybody who's watching this show to Google Chinese ghost cities. | ||
| Second thing you should Google is Chinese EV graveyards. | ||
| And that is China is seemingly taking the lead in creating electrical vehicles. | ||
| China has very good companies, but they're all subsidized heavily by the Chinese government. | ||
| Without Chinese state subsidy, all the EV cars, BYDs will be finished. | ||
| So you can spend $5,000 in China to buy a very good BYD car, the equivalent of a Model 3 of Tesla. | ||
| That's cheap. | ||
| The reason they could do that is because companies make cars just to get state subsidy, which is enormous. | ||
| So that's why you have enormous overall capacity of Chinese electric vehicles. | ||
| Millions, millions of Chinese-made electric vehicles were rusting in EV graveyards in China because they just want to pursue this crazy policy of state subsidy. | ||
| And now China tried to export that kind of capacity of EV cars to the rest of the world at a very low price, which is subsidized by the government. | ||
| That's why I use the word scourge. | ||
| That is the case, because you cannot allow that kind of state-sponsored overcapacity to ruin the global economy. | ||
| About 12 minutes left with Miles Yu of the Hudson Institute. | ||
| It's Hudson.org if you want to check out their work. | ||
| One do something, maybe you'll find it interesting, maybe not, but three different descriptions, news analysis, opinion pieces about the Trump-G deal yesterday from three different news sources. | ||
| The New York Times, widely considered to be on the left, the Wall Street Journal, widely considered to be on the right, and then there's the China Daily. | ||
| Viewers might not know it's a state-sponsored news organization, state-sponsored by China. | ||
| They drop it off at our door every day. | ||
| We don't subscribe to it. | ||
| But I picked it up this morning and I grabbed their lead editorial describing it. | ||
| So first from the New York Times. | ||
| This is on the front page of the news analysis piece. | ||
| They write, when Xi Jinping walked out of his meeting with President Trump on Thursday, he projected the confidence of a powerful leader who could make Washington blink. | ||
| The outcome of the talk suggested that he had succeeded by flexing China's near monopoly on rare earths and its purchasing power over U.S. soybeans. | ||
| Mr. Xi won key concessions from Washington, a reduction in tariffs, a suspension on port fees, Chinese ships, and delay of U.S. export controls. | ||
| They write both sides also agreed to extend the truce struck earlier this year. | ||
| So that's the New York Times. | ||
| This is the Wall Street Journal's editorial board. | ||
| They write, one lesson here on this trade deal is that the trade wars aren't easy to win, especially against a peer competitor. | ||
| China chose to fight back, and Mr. Trump underestimated the leverage that China has with its control of global rare earth minerals. | ||
| China's economy may be less resilient overall than America's, but Mr. Trump and Republicans have to face voters and Mr. Xi does not. | ||
| Two descriptions. | ||
| The third, again, China Daily, this is the state-sponsored news, and this is the lead of their lead editorial. | ||
| They write, the meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump in the Republic of Korea has sent a strong and timely signal to the world in search of a strong and timely signal to a world in search of certainty and stability. | ||
| China and the United States, the two largest economies, are committed to steadying their ties. | ||
| Three different descriptions. | ||
| What do you take from them? | ||
| I take of them, and they're all wrong. | ||
| So think about this. | ||
| Think about this, right? | ||
| I'm not entirely wrong. | ||
| The Australian Journal is not entirely wrong. | ||
| I think it's got a part of it right. | ||
| In the United States, the dominant press basically will see Trump always as a loser. | ||
| So everything he does is always outside the wind because he's so silly, so stupid dictator. | ||
| That is not the case. | ||
| Think about this, right? | ||
| The China Daily, of course, want to vainglory. | ||
| Xi Jim is a man of enormous vainglory. | ||
| He wants to be viewed as the leader of the world. | ||
| He literally believes he's going to tell the world what is the right direction to go. | ||
| So the reason why I talk about this, right? | ||
| New York Times mentioned about tariff reduction and also rare earth stronghold. | ||
| Those are all two, very important. | ||
| But think about this. | ||
| We reduce China's tariff by 10%, the Sentinel tariff. | ||
| That's a signal. | ||
| That's a veiled threat. | ||
| If you don't do it, we might go back, right? | ||
| We might just keep going back. | ||
| So Chinese tariff coming to the United States still maintains at 47 to 57, some of them like cars, 100%, right? | ||
| So it's very high. | ||
| Steel and aluminum is still over 100%. | ||
| So in other words, there's really nothing substantial about the tariff deal. | ||
| Now, it's just like you use a negotiating threat. | ||
| Now, about rare earth material, China definitely has a stronghold. | ||
| But one of the whole things about Chinese rare earth control is also backfired very seriously against China. | ||
| You know, China's first weaponization of rare earth was against Japan in 2010. | ||
| So Japan was shocked. | ||
| So what Japan has done is two things. | ||
| One is dramatically increased the source of rare earths from other countries. | ||
| Japan invested heavily in countries like Burma and Vietnam to extract, to mine and refine REEs, rare earth elements for Japan. | ||
| Secondly, Japan has stockpiled a lot of rare earth. | ||
| That's one of the things that President Trump achieved in Japan. | ||
| The Japanese prime minister, new prime minister, Takayishi, agreed to share some of the Japan stockpile of rare earths for the America. | ||
| So China has a stronghold, but it's not really that left and death at this moment. | ||
| Secondly, you know, China has to sell its rare earths for other countries. | ||
| One of the countries China has given a lot to is Pakistan. | ||
| China's like a die-hard war-weather friend. | ||
| You know what happened in mid-September? | ||
| The Pakistani Prime Minister Sharif came to the White House, bringing along his army chief, the Marshal Munir, I believe this guy's name, and he showed President Trump a box of rare earth elements, products from Pakistan, and they agreed to export to the United States. | ||
| So we immediately signed a deal, putting $400 million through the company in Missouri, United States Strategic Metals, to cooperate with the Pakistani company to extract rare earths for the United States. | ||
| A week later, on October 2nd, the first installment, shipment of rare earths from Pakistan arrived in the United States. | ||
| China was furious regarding Pakistan as kind of the Benedict Arnold. | ||
| And a few days later, China announced that infamous global ban on rare earth sale. | ||
| And so basically, if you have 1,000 of China-sourced air earth material, including the iPhone you're using on mine, has to get a pre-approval from China. | ||
| Now, any same person will realize that's basically nonsense because it's impossible to implement. | ||
| So what I'm saying here is that China, yes, has a very strong hold on air material, but it's not going to sustain because there's a lot of loopholes. | ||
| They panicked. | ||
| So I don't see there's any advantage for China to be this person. | ||
| I mean, Xi Jinping is not a very wise guy. | ||
| He has to understand this one thing. | ||
| I don't think he fully understands this. | ||
| The entire Trump cabinet administration is fed up with China. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| President Trump probably is Xi Jinping's the only lifeline available in Washington, D.C. If he doesn't understand that, I think we're for a really good wake-up for China. | ||
| Because again, we have the enormous consumption market China has to rely on. | ||
| A lot of Chinese goods are manufactured overly. | ||
| They have to sell somewhere else. | ||
| U.S. is the largest market. | ||
| We try to get a few more phone calls. | ||
| Jimbo's waiting out in Bakersfield, California, Independent. | ||
| Jimbo, good morning to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Hey, a shout out to Brian Lamb and all the C-SPAN Washington Journal hosts and staff. | ||
| You guys do an amazing job. | ||
| I cannot thank you enough. | ||
| Mr. Yu, I need you to refine my vision of China and maybe help correct me so I have a better vision of them. | ||
| I view them as this Frankensteinian monster of this totalitarian state which practices genocide on its own people, coupled with laissez-faire capitalism. | ||
| In fact, I think China is the perfect example that capitalism doesn't need democracy to thrive. | ||
| I think what we need to wonder is, does the democracy need capitalism to thrive? | ||
| But the other thing I was wondering is that I've been reading a lot about how every aspect of the Chinese people's lives are under surveillance. | ||
| So I was just wondering if you could explain to me what how maybe you could help correct my vision of China. | ||
| And again, I'm talking about the Chinese government. | ||
| I've met Chinese people here in Bakersfield before who have been traveling through Bakersfield. | ||
| They are some of the kindest, nicest people that you will ever meet ever. | ||
| I've seen tour buses through them. | ||
| I've sat down and talked to them. | ||
| The Chinese people, like the American people, they're separated from their government. | ||
| Well, Jimbo, let me take the questions. | ||
| Yeah, I'm your vision 2020. | ||
| I don't think I need to click on your vision. | ||
| Listen, you make a very critical element, a point. | ||
| That is the Chinese people and Chinese government are totally different things. | ||
| Now, the Chinese government is very wealthy and powerful. | ||
| They have money because they have a state monopoly. | ||
| Chinese people, over a warm majority of them, were not really that wealthy, particularly after COVID. | ||
| Many of them lost money in stock market and also particularly real estate. | ||
| You know, over 90% of Chinese people are making under $25 a day. | ||
| That's a reality. | ||
| So you make it about Frankenstein. | ||
| Actually, that's a very interesting phrase because, you know, during the Cold War, President Nixon onward all realized China is a communist country. | ||
| China is not a market economy. | ||
| But we have this blind faith, A 51st chance of success in our effort to engage China to open up China, rest the world to China. | ||
| So started with President Nixon's 1972 trip to China. | ||
| So China was embraced in its free market trading system while maintaining a non-market economy and the communist dictatorship, hoping that the gospel of market, the gospel of freedom, would force China to reform, see the light of the day. | ||
| That was the gamble. | ||
| We have lost the gamble. | ||
| President Richard Nixon himself said before his passing in late 1990s that my trip to China may have created Frankenstein, quote, unquote. | ||
| So you're not the only person who thinks that way. | ||
| The problem is that we realize China's problem, the China threat for a long, long, long time, but we don't have a real leader with vision and courage to do so. | ||
| And because a lot of politicians, they say one thing and do another. | ||
| So that's one problem. | ||
| That's one reason why the problem persisted for a long time. | ||
| Well, we'll have to end it there, but we'll have the conversation again down the road. | ||
| Miles Yu is the director of the China Center at the Hudson Institute. | ||
| It is hudson.org if you want to check out his work. | ||
| And we appreciate your time. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Coming up next, our final guest of today's program, Utah Republican Congressman Blake Moore, will join us on the 31st day of the government shutdown. | ||
| We'll chat with him right after the break. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Today on C-SPAN Ceasefire, at a moment of deep division in Washington, one congressman and one senator from opposing parties sit down for a frank and forward-looking conversation. | |
| California Democratic Congressman Scott Peters and Utah Republican Senator John Curtis come together to address the top issues, including the government shutdown, the future of health care, and America's role on the world stage. | ||
| They join host Dasha Burns. | ||
| Ceasefire, Bridging the Divide in American Politics. | ||
| Today, at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold new original series. | ||
| This Sunday with our guest Pulitzer Prize winner, Stacey Schiff, author of biographies, including Ben Franklin, Samuel Adams, and Cleopatra. | ||
| She joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein. | ||
| So writing a second book on Franklin, you must admire him. | ||
| I assume you don't want to write two books on somebody you don't admire, but you do admire him. | ||
| I feel as if he is in all ways admirable in so many ways. | ||
| Just the essential DNA of America. | ||
| His voice is the voice of America, literally. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Watch America's Book Club with Stacey Schiff. | |
| Sundays at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific. | ||
| Only on C-SPAN. | ||
| America marks 250 years, and C-SPAN is there to commemorate every moment, from the signing of the Declaration of Independence to the voices shaping our nation's future. | ||
| We bring you unprecedented all-platform coverage, exploring the stories, sights, and spirit that make up America. | ||
| Join us for remarkable coast-to-coast coverage, celebrating our nation's journey like no other network can. | ||
| America 250. | ||
| Over a year of historic moments. | ||
| Only on the C-SPAN networks. | ||
| So you interviewed the other night. | ||
| I watched it about two o'clock in the morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There was a little thing called C-SPAN, which I don't know how many people were watching. | |
| Don't worry, you were in prime time too, but they happen to have a little rerun. | ||
| Do you really think that we don't remember what just happened last week? | ||
| Thank goodness for C-SPAN, and we all should review the tape. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Everyone wonders when they're watching C-SPAN what the conversations are on the floor. | |
| I'm about to read to you something that was published by C-SPAN. | ||
| There's a lot of things that Congress fights about, that they disagree on. | ||
| We can all watch that on C-SPAN. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Millions of people across the country tuned into C-SPAN. | |
| Thank you! | ||
| That was a made-for-C-SPAN moment. | ||
| If you watch on C-SPAN, you're going to see me physically across the aisle every day, just trying to build relationships and try to understand their perspective and find common ground. | ||
| And welcome forward to everybody watching at home. | ||
| We know C-SPAN covers this live as well. | ||
| We appreciate that. | ||
| And one can only hope that he's able to watch C-SPAN on a black and white television set in his prison cell. | ||
| This is being carried live by C-SPAN. | ||
| It's being watched not only in this country, but it's being watched around the world right now. | ||
| Mike said before, I happened to listen to him, he was on C-SPAN one. | ||
| That's a big upgrade, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Washington Journal continues. | |
| On day 31 of the government shutdown, we continue to check in with members of Congress this morning. | ||
| It's Utah Republican Blake Moore. | ||
| He's a member of the Budget and Ways and Means Committees, and he serves in leadership as Republican Conference Vice Chair. | ||
| Congressman, what's the job of a Republican Conference Vice Chair, and what do you see as your role during this shutdown? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so two separate things there. | |
| The job of the vice chair is traditionally to help sort of support individual members on communicating their message. | ||
| It's, you know, when you're in a you know, when you're in a house conference like we are, so Republican House conference, we broadly communicate messages that sort of are more macro, but each individual person understands their districts more. | ||
| Mine is a heavy federal workforce district, so I have a different communication approach than some others that are maybe more focused on, even though we have a lot of ag, but maybe some are really heavy ag districts and some are more urban districts. | ||
| So it's just my job is to be there to support them. | ||
| It's professional development, so training, getting folks up to speed. | ||
| There's so many things that don't go through your committee that are very important topics that you need to be aware of. | ||
| So our job is to sort of bring in experts and do education on that type of stuff. | ||
| Regarding the shutdown, the job of any congressman during a shutdown is really opaque and really, really difficult to figure out sometimes about what we're supposed to be doing. | ||
| We've got to get this government opened up. | ||
| We've got to fund to fund it. | ||
| We've got to finish the appropriations process. | ||
| And we all get back to our traditional voting schedule and things like that. | ||
| What is your message to those federal workers in your district when they ask, how long is this going to go? | ||
| When am I going to get my next paycheck? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, it's a very difficult issue. | |
| And now we're coming up on a potential third missed pay period if we don't solve this within the next couple weeks. | ||
| And the anxiety is real. | ||
| You go through the first two weeks and it's like, okay, I haven't missed a paycheck yet. | ||
| I'm sure there's a lot of just, you know, Congressional, we've seen this from Congress before where they go back and forth and then they ultimately come to an agreement. | ||
| But this is the barely prolonged, longest full shutdown in history. | ||
| In a week or so, it'll be the longest actual shutdown in history. | ||
| And that's not a good record To beat. | ||
| And so, my folks, I just tell them I lay out the reality and explain why we're in this situation. | ||
| And hopefully, they can, you know, get some comfort that at least my optimism is that we can get five Democrat senators within the next week or two to come on board. | ||
| There were three that caucused with the Democrats very early on. | ||
| And so, I was thinking, okay, this will be a bit of a windfall, and there'll be a couple more each day as they realize the harmful effects of this for air traffic controllers, our military, civilian workforce, all that. | ||
| And I just haven't seen those folks break with ranks yet. | ||
| And hopefully, we see a handful of them in the coming weeks to do it. | ||
| And that's what I communicate: we're very close. | ||
| We just have to get this over the finish line. | ||
| What's a realistic off-ramp here? | ||
| If it was Speaker Moore and Senate Majority Leader Moore, and you were doing the negotiating, what would be the off-ramp that you would offer? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, what's being missed from this whole thing, and what I would offer is: hey, folks, to my Democrat colleagues, we're already negotiating the natural appropriations process, the 12 appropriations bills that fund the basic necessities of the government from defense to labor to HHS to SNAP programs and things like that. | |
| Those are already being negotiated. | ||
| Those get negotiated by the Appropriations Committee all year long. | ||
| And so, we're doing a simple timeline stopgap funding measure. | ||
| And this is all, you know, the current funding level was last signed into law by President Biden. | ||
| And my Democrat colleagues have voted on this in favor of this numerous times. | ||
| But right now, they need a messaging moment. | ||
| And so, I would grant them that you can have your messaging moment, but let's not hold American workers hostage on getting this done. | ||
| And we're already negotiating. | ||
| So, negotiate the appropriations process in good faith, which is what Susan Collins and Tom Cole on my side in the House are already doing with their Democrat counterparts and get back to work. | ||
| And if they want to make this about, you know, health care not related to appropriations, like it's completely separate. | ||
| Have those conversations, have those meetings, let people sign on to bipartisan bills. | ||
| Like, there is work going on there, but you can't, you know, you can't argue about an orange while the apple is the actual issue here. | ||
| It's appropriations funding, and we're already negotiating. | ||
| They're already bipartisan, and that I would re-emphasize that. | ||
| When it comes to what we're negotiating, is it time to draft a new continuing resolution? | ||
| This one, you talk about a couple Democratic senators voting for it. | ||
| It's the one that the House originally passed before sending it over to the Senate back in September. | ||
| It expires on November 21st. | ||
| So, what happens after that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| So, there'd have to be more time given. | ||
| And I don't know what the timeline on that looks like. | ||
| I haven't spoken with Speaker about what the thoughts are there. | ||
| But yeah, this just goes to November 21st. | ||
| I feel like if we could get this, you know, if we could have this voted on this coming week, we have three more weeks that we could accomplish a lot of things with respect to final appropriations bills, conferencing. | ||
| This is the Senate and the House versions of each of these bills. | ||
| Let's take energy and water. | ||
| They're going to be pretty close, but there's probably going to be some language differences between the two, and we need to conference those. | ||
| That takes a little bit of time to do, but it's fairly easy work. | ||
| And so, if we had three more weeks of the government being open, kind of getting rid of all of the every one of us is back in my district. | ||
| I have 21, I have 20,000 civilian DOD workforce. | ||
| I have 7,000 IRS officers here. | ||
| Like, that's my big concern right now: making sure they're taken care of. | ||
| I was at a food drive the other day. | ||
| Like, we shouldn't be doing that while we're trying to finish the other piece. | ||
| So give us three weeks. | ||
| How many April 20, when November 21st comes, we'll see what we've accomplished. | ||
| And then if there needs to be an extension, there needs to be an extension. | ||
| How many appropriations bills are there left still to pass? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, there's three that are being conferenced right now. | |
| So I think nine on the Senate side. | ||
| We've passed a few more on the House side, which is typically the case. | ||
| But we're not at the full 12 yet. | ||
| And so and you think it can be done in three weeks? | ||
| It would be tough. | ||
| I'll be honest. | ||
| That would be tough because we lost all of October to be able to do it for this messaging, this messaging necessity that the Democrats did. | ||
| And again, this is a healthcare thing that they're trying to negotiate. | ||
| They put a timeline, they put the enhanced premium tax credits for Obamacare on a timeline to expire at the end of this year. | ||
| They did that when they had the White House House and Senate. | ||
| And so they're now saying that we have to do it. | ||
| And we don't think it's good policy to just overly subsidize a market because it never drives costs down. | ||
| And so that's like a big disagreement. | ||
| But we can have those debates, but it has nothing to do with the 12 appropriations bills. | ||
| So let's get the 12 appropriations bills done and focus on that and try to walk into the gum at the same time. | ||
| Plenty of callers already on the lines for you. | ||
| It's 202-748-8001 for Republicans. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| Dan's up first. | ||
| It's Bel Air, Maryland, line for Republicans. | ||
| You are on with Congressman Blake Moore of Utah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| I just want to comment. | ||
| I can't understand the comment on nuclear weapons. | ||
| Let's test more nuclear weapons. | ||
| And it came on the heels of President Trump visiting Japan. | ||
| I mean, the anniversary of Nagasaki and Hiroshima was in August. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I think it's time you start looking at the 25th Amendment. | ||
| What the heck is this guy thinking? | ||
| Blake Moore. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so I think the most basic aspect of this is to make sure that we're on parity with some of our biggest adversaries. | |
| And we've always taken approach and conservatives have always taken an approach with peace through strength. | ||
| And I think that's what's the underlying aspect here. | ||
| And so we have a really unique and strong triad. | ||
| It's a nuclear deterrence system. | ||
| Triad means it comes from three different directions, whether it be submarine, whether it be bomber launched, or whether it be ground-based within the silos throughout the Western United States. | ||
| We have a really good, strong program. | ||
| But if Russia or China were to be emboldened by all of any nuclear testing that they're doing and try to gain some bit of bravado, if you will, on their ability to do this in advance, their nuclear weapons, they need to know that we are still stronger than them. | ||
| And that's an important aspect. | ||
| And I hope that's at the crux of it. | ||
| I obviously wasn't expecting to get to see that announcement. | ||
| And I haven't been in any classified briefings or anything associated with it. | ||
| But the concept of peace through strength is what's rooted here. | ||
| And that's something we all need to be able to support. | ||
| Out to Washington. | ||
| This is Brian on the Independent line. | ||
| Brian, you're on with Congressman Blake Moore. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Secretary, Washington Journal. | |
| Congressman, I'm glad I got a bean counter on here so we can get the numbers from the horse's mouth. | ||
| You know, I need to make a comment and then a question and take your answer off the air. | ||
| My comment would be about this Venezuelan thing. | ||
| I'm hearing from the business side of things that the Venezuelan oil is a big draw for some reason. | ||
| And we've got a couple refineries that can do their tar-like oil only, or specifically. | ||
| And the big cheeses of the oil companies can't get their foot in edgewise in Venezuela. | ||
| So, Congressman, I'm just looking like the only way that they guys can get access to this huge, huge source of oil is what's breaking out in front of us right now. | ||
| I hope that's not the case. | ||
| But what's the question? | ||
| What's the question, Brian? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My question to the congressman in charge of the numbers is: I'm under the impression that you guys get a allowance as well as a wage. | |
| So, if you could tell us what the beginning congressman makes and then the intermediate and then the advanced senior on wages and their operating fund, somebody said it was several million dollars per term, and as well as your French benefits like medical, dental, and so forth. | ||
| And how long have you been in Congress? | ||
| And how many times have you voted against the Affordable Care Act? | ||
| That's Brian in Washington. | ||
| Congressman Moore. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Just pretty simple, I think. | ||
| I think every member of the House of Representatives and every member of the Senate makes $174,000 a year. | ||
| That hasn't increased for about 15 years or so. | ||
| I could be wrong on that specifically. | ||
| We don't have a COLA increase. | ||
| All federal employees have what's called a cost of living increase. | ||
| Members of Congress are too worried about that vote to do that. | ||
| It was paused several, maybe a decade or so ago. | ||
| And so our salary has actually just been exactly the same over time. | ||
| The operating budgets, they're annually and they cover all your travel, your leases, staff salaries, and communication material. | ||
| And they're probably like a million dollars a year for each member of Congress. | ||
| And those have rarely, you know, those have been meager increases over the years. | ||
| So that's kind of the situation there. | ||
| I can say that my salary is not right now because we're in a government shutdown and I have 31,000 federal workers. | ||
| And so I don't take a salary. | ||
| I've opted out of taking a salary until we get this government back to being funded. | ||
| And hopefully we do that soon. | ||
| Let me give you a federal worker. | ||
| This is Raynard in Virginia on that line for federal workers. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| How are you doing, Ms. Mole? | ||
| Doing well. | ||
| That's good. | ||
| I just wanted to ask the guest, what does he think about the statement that was posted on X by Representative Clay Figgins as of regards to SNAP and since he's the Republican Conference Vice Chair? | ||
| Is any action going to be taken against him for that post that he made on X? | ||
| I apologize. | ||
| I haven't seen the post, so I'm not sure what we are talking about there. | ||
| I apologize about that. | ||
| Sorry, we'll go to Ellen in Florida. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I just wanted to ask why they haven't been working for the last three going on four weeks. | |
| He was just talking about how much they could do in three weeks coming up. | ||
| Well, they could have been doing a lot anyway. | ||
| And I also don't understand why they had an intelligence committee meeting and had no Democrats there. | ||
| And how in the world do we have a Department of Vengeance in this administration? | ||
| Can he explain that too? | ||
| Congressman. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, thanks. | |
| I've been, whether I'm in Washington, D.C. or back in my district, some of the times right now, the most important work that we do is in our districts when you're back home. | ||
| Every time you're in a district work period, you're actually quite busy. | ||
| Again, like I mentioned, I have 31,000 federal workers. | ||
| And there's a lot of issues and concerns going on in my district right now for that. | ||
| But there's constantly meetings that I'm meeting with constituents back home. | ||
| But I've been in D.C. a bunch too. | ||
| A lot of members have. | ||
| We voted to fund the government towards the end of September. | ||
| The Senate has been trying 13 different times to do a very simple, clean, continuing resolution that has failed. | ||
| Honestly, what I think is going on here is this is all, let me just have a really honest moment with all of your viewers. | ||
| This is a moment, this is a midterm election moment right now. | ||
| And so Democrats are using this government shutdown, I think, to say, hey, look, these subsidies to insurance companies are expiring at the end of the year, and we want to extend our enhanced version. | ||
| Now, Republicans are saying, well, look, just let them go back to their traditional subsidy that was established in Obamacare back in 2010. | ||
| That's a negotiation that can be had and can continue to have. | ||
| But this is what the Democrats are going to want to use for the next nine months is making everything about health care when the reality is that health premiums are going up and it's mostly not due to whatever remote we're talking about. | ||
| But they want to use this as a tool going into the midterm elections. | ||
| So that's why I'm hopeful that that can fizzle out here in the next couple of weeks and we can get back and just get five Democrats to support it. | ||
| And we'll be fully back to work. | ||
| But we all have been working over the last month. | ||
| And so I don't buy the notion that that's not taking place. | ||
| Our appropriations committees have been working very hard to get these bills in the right spot. | ||
| But there's a lot of things we can't do unless we've got a functioning government. | ||
| We need to open that back up. | ||
| On the previous caller and Clay Higgins, I hadn't heard about it either. | ||
| This is the story last night from Newsweek. | ||
| Republican U.S. Representative Clay Higgins of Louisiana is facing backlash online after saying that supplemental nutrition assistance program recipients who don't have one month of groceries stockpiled should never receive the benefit again and added, because wow, stop smoking crack. | ||
| Newsweek reached out to Higgins' office via phone on Thursday night for comment and left a message. | ||
| That's the story that was posted yesterday evening. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, obviously don't agree with that sentiment. | |
| And we need to recognize that folks are nervous about SNAP right now. | ||
| Our state just came in with several million dollars and I've got nonprofits reaching out to our office to find out what they can do to help. | ||
| This is not their responsibility. | ||
| This is a program that we need to fund and we need to make sure that we're doing it correctly. | ||
| We worked on some really important SNAP stuff in the Working Families Tax Cuts Bill that we passed earlier last July. | ||
| And we made sure that states were doing a fair job of distributing the money and making sure there's good safety guardrails around it. | ||
| But there's strong support for SNAP in Congress. | ||
| And yeah, I don't agree with that sentiment. | ||
| Just a few minutes left with Congressman Blake Moore of Utah Republican line. | ||
| This is Charles in the Hoosier State. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I was just wanting to speak, Chat. | |
| My understanding was in the continuing resolution in March that the representatives had voted themselves a $60,000 increase in salary. | ||
| So I was just wondering, in my job, we have deadlines and we're expected to meet those deadlines. | ||
| And when we're rewarded with bonuses and don't meet deadlines, we lose those bonuses. | ||
| I was wondering about the accountability of our representatives to meet the obligations of what we pay them for. | ||
| So that's the first I've heard of a $60,000 bonus or increase in salary from the CR. | ||
| I've never had anybody bring that up to me, so I'm not sure where you're getting that information. | ||
| The CR that we did, and this is probably Washington, D.C. talk, but it was a clean CR, which means it had no policies, like a conservative policy that we knew Democrats would be voting against. | ||
| There's none of that. | ||
| It's just an extension of the current funding levels. | ||
| For current funding levels, again, that were established by the Biden administration that have continued on in our main core government functions. | ||
| So, yeah, there's no salary increase associated with that. | ||
| It's a very clean CR. | ||
| There was security elements to it as Supreme Court justices and senators and members of the House. | ||
| We have a little bit of money to make sure that you have proper security in some situations. | ||
| It's pretty meager compared to the grand scheme of what government funding is. | ||
| There was that that was a part of it, but no salary increases whatsoever. | ||
| To our independent line, Connecticut. | ||
| Gary, good morning. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Good morning, Congressman. | ||
| I'm calling about a fraud that's being perpetrated against American homeowners who are completely innocent. | ||
| Let me quickly outline it succinctly. | ||
| Thieves go to get a false title of an American citizen's home. | ||
| They put a notary stamp on it. | ||
| They go to a bank, and I'm giving you the short version, and they manage to get a second mortgage or a loan against that property, which they don't own. | ||
| The homeowner has nothing to do with it. | ||
| After months of this not being paid back, the loan, the homeowners then assessed the fees and the money owed to the bank. | ||
| It would seem to me that not your committee, but perhaps the banking committee, and this should be partisan, both sides, Democrats and Republicans working together to protect the American people, should be holding the banks accountable for not doing due diligence when they proffer those loans based on false documents. | ||
| Can you tell me what your opinion is on that and what you would plan to do? | ||
| Yeah, I think fraud is unfortunately running rampant in our society. | ||
| It's one of the most toxic, dangerous things that exists. | ||
| I've had, you know, I don't think, I think it's hit every single one of us at some point in one way or another. | ||
| I've not experienced this particular situation that you've come against, but it's extremely dangerous. | ||
| Yeah, this should be an absolutely nonpartisan issue and would support making sure that all institutions associated with it, whether it be a lender, whether it be a homeowner or a watchdog organization, we've got to make sure that we get this right and sort of tighten up any loopholes that exist for folks to do that type of nefarious criminal activity. | ||
| And so, yeah, I agree with you. | ||
| Congressman, I know we only have just a couple minutes left before you've got to run today. | ||
| Can I ask you that the Beehive State makes an appearance on the front page of the New York Times today? | ||
| I don't know if you saw the story. | ||
| Just wanted to get your thoughts on it. | ||
| This is what they write. | ||
| To glimpse the future of homeless policy, homelessness policy in the age of President Trump, consider the 16 acres of scrubby pasture on the outskirts of Salt Lake City where the state plans to place as many as 1,300 homeless people in what supporters call a services camp and critics deem a detention camp. | ||
| State planners say the site announced last month after a secretive search will treat addiction and mental illness and provide a humane alternative to the streets where afflictions often go untreated and people die at alarming rates. | ||
| Have you heard about this? | ||
| What do you know about it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'm not directly involved with that. | |
| I've heard some, I've seen similar headlines, and I've obviously worked a lot with a lot of agencies, even in my prior career when I was in management consulting. | ||
| Utah is an incredibly compassionate state. | ||
| I think our governor has been out and said this plan is entirely about compassion and solving a problem. | ||
| We cannot continue on with status quo. | ||
| We have to think outside the box. | ||
| We have to be willing to challenge conventional thinking. | ||
| And this is run by some of the people that care the most about this issue, that are data-driven. | ||
| And as you've mentioned even in your explanation of it, the substance abuse and mental health issues associated with folks that are experiencing homelessness, that is the vast majority of the problem. | ||
| And we need to be able to find a way to care for this. | ||
| So this goes, Utah is trying to be innovative. | ||
| And at the root of it is compassion for figuring out how to best solve the social ill that plagues not just the people in homelessness, not just the people trying to solve it, but all citizens that are concerned about the welfare of these folks. | ||
| And I have absolute trust that my state will be delivering what they can with the right amount of resources that's possible and doing it with amazingly good intent. | ||
| Congressman Blake Moore is the Republican Conference Vice Chair, a member of the Ways and Means and Budget Committees, joining us this morning on the 31st day of the government shutdown. | ||
| We appreciate your time, Congressman. | ||
| I know you've got to run and get your day started there in Utah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you so much and happy Halloween, everyone. | |
| Same to you, sir. | ||
| In just a few minutes, we're going to take viewers over to the United States Capitol, where the Speaker of the House is set to hold another press conference this on the 31st day of the government shutdown. | ||
| That's where you will see the speaker in just a few minutes, but we're going to take some phone calls until then and continue to hear from you until he steps up to the microphone. | ||
| He's expected to be joined by the Agriculture Secretary, and he just stepped up to the microphone. | ||
| So we'll send you there and we'll see you back here tomorrow morning on the Washington Journal. | ||
| Every day at this podium about the real pain that Americans are experiencing because of the Democrat shutdown. | ||
| We talked about the pain for our troops, for our federal workers, for American families. | ||
| And this morning we want to speak specifically about the millions of American families that are going to feel real hardship because of the SNAP benefits drying up. |