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Bipartisan Politics Discussion
00:02:11
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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. | ||
| Now, this week's edition of C-SPAN's Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins. | ||
| Our guests are Utah Senator John Curtis and Congressman Scott Peters of California. | ||
| Cease fire starts now. | ||
| Welcome to Cease fire where we seek to bridge the divide in American politics. | ||
| I'm Dasha Burns, Politico White House Bureau Chief, and I'm joined today by two guests who have agreed to keep the conversation civil, even when they disagree. | ||
| Utah Republican Senator John Curtis and California Democratic Congressman Scott Peters. | ||
| Thank you both so much for joining me today. | ||
| We've got a bipartisan and bicameral conversation today, which is very exciting for us here on Ceasefire. | ||
| You both have served in the House together. | ||
| You work together across party lines on a number of issues, including climate policy. | ||
| How did that bipartisanship start? | ||
| And is it still going now that you, Senator Curtis, are in the Senate? | ||
| Well, a big shout out to my colleague, Representative Peters, not only a good person, but a good friend. | ||
| I don't know, maybe Scott remembers where it started. | ||
| To me, I can't even really pinpoint a specific moment. | ||
|
Constructive Conversations Needed
00:15:39
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| But Scott's always been really good on climate. | ||
| I've aspired to be good from a Republican perspective. | ||
| Maybe it was a trip we traveled on, Scott. | ||
| Maybe you can remember exactly where it was. | ||
| But just a great amount of respect. | ||
| South America, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, Congressman, is that trip, the bipartisan friendship that you all developed? | ||
| Is that still lingering, even though you're in different places on the Hill now? | ||
| Well, you know, senators are so hard to get to. | ||
| They're very special. | ||
| But I'm confident that when I see John, that we will continue to be friends. | ||
| No, in all honesty, I think John and I kid it off right away because although we're from different parties, we like to solve problems. | ||
| I think one of the things about John is he was a mayor. | ||
| I was a city council president in San Diego. | ||
| He was mayor provo. | ||
| We're used to having to work things out. | ||
| And you just can't make a speech and go home and say you did your job. | ||
| You actually have to work to solutions. | ||
| And I think we're both oriented that way. | ||
| So it's been a relationship around that. | ||
| I think, you know, he's a pretty likable guy as well. | ||
| You both are seen as moderates in your parties. | ||
| How hard is being a moderate within your own caucus right now? | ||
| Well, let me first of all just beat up on the word moderate for a moment because, you know, a moderate in San Diego is different than a moderate in Utah. | ||
| And I like to tease people when they say you're a moderate. | ||
| And I say, could you just substitute that word with normal, right? | ||
| And I think we try to be normal, right? | ||
| We try to be like the people that we represent. | ||
| And I think, you know, the Scotts obviously does a fantastic job of that. | ||
| And we represent, you know, different people from different perspectives. | ||
| But part of that is simply really just being a normal Utah. | ||
| Right, but that conversation does tend to change a little bit once you get into the national sphere, right? | ||
| So Congressman Peters, what is the moderate Democrat challenge when it comes to here in Washington when you're in D.C.? | ||
| Well, for me, I really come to be a problem solver. | ||
| And like I said before, you really can't do that with one party. | ||
| You know, you need to get a majority in the House. | ||
| You need 60 votes in the Senate for just about anything. | ||
| So you're going to need both parties under any circumstance. | ||
| So if you're not willing to listen to folks on the other side and not willing to really figure, like take the problem false first, say what's the solution, and then build the politics around that, I don't think you're really going to be successful in getting things done, which is why I come to Congress in the first place. | ||
| It's not that good a job if you live in San Diego to go to Washington, D.C. I'm from San Diego myself. | ||
| Sometimes I question my life choices. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, well, come visit, but it's very, very hard to do. | ||
| I visit. | ||
| I'm from North County, Oceanside. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, but I'm saying, like, for me, you know, that's going to mean that the people who are really on the sidelines, who are advocates, are going to disagree with you, and you have to get used to that. | ||
| I tell my staff, if no one's grumbling, we're not getting anything done because change upsets people. | ||
| But it's really what people want us to do. | ||
| They didn't really send us here to make speeches and go home and say our job is done. | ||
| How much grumbling do you get from members of your own party when you try to be bipartisan? | ||
| I've had two big battles. | ||
| I can just mention for you. | ||
| One, I was an advocate of President Obama's free trade arrangement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. | ||
| There was not a majority of Democrats who were for that, but I just saw that as a way to help American businesses get their products out over the world where most of the consumers are. | ||
| I tried my best to explain it to people here, but the labor community was very upset with me. | ||
| We had protests in my office, and I still think it's right. | ||
| I think the way tariffs are playing out now shows us that that was really a pretty good way to go. | ||
| And then also when the Democrats had the House, the Senate, and the presidency, the trifecta, like the Republicans have now, we did a provision on drug pricing. | ||
| I did not like the way our party had fashioned it at the beginning. | ||
| I thought it was going to destroy private investment in drug discovery. | ||
| So I wanted to make an amendment. | ||
| I got hammered for that too. | ||
| Protests at the office, people calling me all sorts of names. | ||
| But we made the bill better, and all the Democrats ran for re-election on the product that we produced. | ||
| And I think I made a contribution. | ||
| But it's not like it's easy. | ||
| Despite the grumbling. | ||
| Yeah, and also political courage. | ||
| Political courage is just people yelling at you. | ||
| We're not deployed overseas in battle. | ||
| We just have to be willing for people to yell at us. | ||
| And I think, as I say, you need to really find those points where you have to talk back to your own people. | ||
| And that's when leadership starts. | ||
| Well, Senator Curtis, I want to play a moment from you on the floor earlier this year. | ||
| This is a floor speech, your first floor speech in May. | ||
| I've said many times, I want both the President and this institution, the Senate, to be wildly successful. | ||
| Sometimes that desire requires us to be wildly honest. | ||
| Something that I think we'll all agree we could use a little more of in Washington, D.C. | ||
| The way I see it, the odds of Congress delivering real results for the American people go up dramatically when we start telling each other the truth, not just behind closed doors, but out in the open, where the public can see what I believe is their right to know. | ||
| Honest policy conversations on issues that are vital to the fundamental of our future matter more than ever. | ||
| So, how is Congress doing with honest policy conversations so far? | ||
| Well, first I'm going to give a shout out to my colleague from San Diego. | ||
| The couple of points he brought up didn't go unnoticed. | ||
| And I think that when people see people on the other side of the aisle take those positions, it builds credibility and makes somebody far more likely to reach out to them. | ||
| So Scott's done a really good job at that. | ||
| The reason, you know, your maiden speech in the Senate's a big deal. | ||
| It puts down a marker, right? | ||
| So why did I bring up that topic in my maiden speech? | ||
| I wanted that marker. | ||
| And I could point to a couple of areas where we're really not being honest with the American people. | ||
| And I think that's why you get a lot of frustration is they're smart enough to know, right, when we're not being honest with them. | ||
| And I'd love to be part of turning that around. | ||
| Well, right now, honesty, open, productive conversations are a little bit hard to come by given the government is currently shut down. | ||
| So I do want to talk about that. | ||
| We're potentially going to see here the longest federal shutdown in history. | ||
| We're not there quite yet, but we might be careening towards it. | ||
| Congressman Peters, I want to ask you first, the conversation for Democrats in the House, what are you hearing? | ||
| Is there an off-ramp here that you can see? | ||
| Well, it's a very frustrating time, and it's different from any other. | ||
| This is my third big shutdown. | ||
| I've been through 44 continuing resolutions. | ||
| Maybe that's not something to be proud of. | ||
| All of them were bipartisan. | ||
| And it's different now because there's no conversations going on. | ||
| You know, President Trump, if I were the president, I'm not the president, you know, he needs seven Democratic votes in the Senate. | ||
| I'd have reached out well before September 30th and started to say, what do I need to get those seven votes? | ||
| Because as an elected official, you can never assume a vote. | ||
| And that didn't happen until the day before. | ||
| There wasn't even a meeting. | ||
| I don't even think President Trump met Hakeem Jeffries until the day before the deadline. | ||
| And there was no substantive discussion going on. | ||
| And now we're into the shutdown where nothing's happening. | ||
| And the Speaker of the House has actually sent us all home. | ||
| He won't let us come to work, even though we're all being paid. | ||
| And our staffs are all working, by the way, they're working with no pay. | ||
| I just think that's ridiculous. | ||
| In the previous shutdowns, we weren't allowed to go home. | ||
| We had to stay there. | ||
| They would schedule votes every day, so you had to be there. | ||
| They would not let you fly home on your government expense. | ||
| And so we were talking constantly about how to resolve this. | ||
| And that's what we should be doing now. | ||
| I don't think the president should be in Asia now. | ||
| I think the president should be in Washington, D.C. When under the shutdown under President Obama, Citizen Trump said a shutdown was a sign of a weak president. | ||
| And I think we have a president that's disengaged at a time we need to have discussions. | ||
| The seven weeks we were supposed to get with this short-term continuing resolution was time we were going to use to negotiate the budget. | ||
| Why aren't we negotiating the budget now? | ||
| There's just no reason for it. | ||
| These talks aren't happening, and I think that they need to. | ||
| Senator Curtis, I want to ask you to respond to two things that your friend here just said. | ||
| First, what is your message to President Trump? | ||
| Should he get more engaged here? | ||
| Yeah, so yes and no. | ||
| So the president doesn't have a vote, right? | ||
| Like we talk all the time about Congress taking back more from the executive branch, and then here we are leaning on the executive branch to solve our problems. | ||
| So there's a big part of me that wants to say we can do this ourselves, right? | ||
| Like this is because so much of what Congress has done has been directed by the president. | ||
| Yeah, so this is our chance, right? | ||
| Like let's step up. | ||
| Representative Peters is exactly right. | ||
| We don't get out of this unless there's approximately seven Democrats that are persuaded to vote for us. | ||
| And I agree with him. | ||
| Like, listen, I love Mike Johnson. | ||
| He is, to me, rock solid, but we need to get Congress back. | ||
| Yeah, what is your message? | ||
| I mean, we talked about some of the differences between past shutdowns. | ||
| One glaring difference is the House isn't here. | ||
| So this is the, I think Scott will agree. | ||
| This is the strangest shutdown ever, right? | ||
| Like, it's opposite day in so many ways. | ||
| And he's right. | ||
| I mean, I remember sitting in my office day after day after day. | ||
| That brings motivation, right, to solve this. | ||
| We get paid. | ||
| That is so wrong. | ||
| Most of us, by the way, tell the clerk to withhold our pay. | ||
| But if we don't, we get paid while our staff is home, while the TSA doesn't, while the military, like it's just really wrong. | ||
| So if it were up to me, we would be here. | ||
| We would be pounding it out. | ||
| We would find that consensus. | ||
| We would open up the government and do exactly what the American people expect us to do. | ||
| So what's your message to Speaker Mike Johnson? | ||
| So listen, look, look, Speaker Johnson, I love you. | ||
| I love what you've done, but it's time to come back to work. | ||
| You both were on the Problem Solvers Caucus in the House. | ||
| Congressman Peters, you still are. | ||
| Co-chairs Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Swasey said they would meet with senators on the shutdown and ACA subsidies. | ||
| How important, Congressman, is the bipartisan and bicameral conversation here. | ||
| It's always what's solved it before. | ||
| I think it is important. | ||
| I would love, by the way, if John's right, then the Senate can do this themselves, can actually convene. | ||
| I think that would make a lot of sense. | ||
| I hope that there's constructive conversations going on among senators. | ||
| But, you know, I would say there's one other complicating thing I think we should really mention. | ||
| It's a little bit of the elephant in the room. | ||
| And that's the president's attitude toward budgets and his attitude toward impoundments and the rescissions we've seen. | ||
| It's hard for us to make a deal with a president who says the day after he signs it that he doesn't have to abide by it. | ||
| And you've got Russ Vogt, the head of the Office of Management and Budget, out there saying openly he wants to overturn settled law on impoundment, which is what Richard Nixon tried to do, saying, I don't have to spend money on this part of the budget I don't agree with. | ||
| And then we had this rescission of money on public broadcasting. | ||
| Not the biggest thing, but it sends a message that after you've done a deal, the party and the majority can go back and undo it. | ||
| And that makes it very, very difficult. | ||
| So we've got to get the president some commitment from him that once we pass a budget in the Congress and he signs it, that we're all going to live with it for a year. | ||
| And I guess we really can't ignore him in that way. | ||
| So I think if John's right, they can do a deal in the Senate. | ||
| We're going to need some assurance that it's going to be observed as all presidents have in the past, at least since Nixon. | ||
| But Nixon learned his lesson and was overturned. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, Senator Curtis, you talked about Congress trying to take some of that authority over the purse back. | ||
| Is there something to be done to encourage President Trump to actually stand by the budgets? | ||
| Well, you notice they haven't sent over any more rescissions. | ||
| And I think there's an understanding that even Republicans, right, not everything, I wouldn't disagree with everything he has said about rescissions. | ||
| And I think a lot of Republicans in the Senate do feel like, look, this is our responsibility. | ||
| We got it from here. | ||
| I won't argue that some small rescissions came over, but I do think there's a reason more haven't come over. | ||
| And I would just say, like, one of the things that's just really unusual about this shutdown is the pain points. | ||
| So in previous shutdowns, we've blocked off memorials for our war heroes coming back. | ||
| We haven't emptied the trash on them all. | ||
| We've closed agencies and members have not gone back home. | ||
| As they go back home, you know, everybody's base is kind of telling them they're doing the right thing on both sides. | ||
| And so they come back, and there's just not the built-up pressure. | ||
| When you pay the military, it takes off pressure. | ||
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unidentified
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Now, we all know next week we're heading for a huge phone about to change. | |
| I mean, a lot of people I talk to, just your average citizens, are like, oh, is that shutdown still going on? | ||
| Well, that's going to change once people potentially lose their SNAP benefits, the ACA enrollment starts, TSA, air traffic controllers, people are traveling for the holidays. | ||
| If that gets impacted, how much do you think this November 1st sort of clear deadline, Senator, how much do you think that is going to change the dynamic? | ||
| I have to think it's dramatic, right? | ||
| Because the pain points have not been there. | ||
| But I don't know how you avoid the pain point of SNAP. | ||
| That's a massive one, right? | ||
| Like, yes, TSA can keep coming for a while. | ||
| Nobody knows quite when we cross that line. | ||
| But we know when we cross that line, and we're not doing SNAP benefits. | ||
| And I have to think that's a huge pain point on both sides. | ||
| I was going to say, do you think that moves Democrats more or Republicans more or both? | ||
| I'd be shocked if it didn't move both, right? | ||
| Nobody wants to see that happen. | ||
| Congressman, how do you see this looming deadline for your party? | ||
| Well, I think it's frustrating because we've been very clear about what we're concerned about with the expiration of the health care subsidies. | ||
| And I think in normal times, you would get a counteroffer, and we got nothing. | ||
| And we're not in control of the House or the Senate or the Presidency. | ||
| So it's very frustrating for us. | ||
| And I agree with John that the pressure that built up when you're stuck in D.C., it can be constructive in terms of solving the problem. | ||
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Why Delay Grajalva's Swearing-In?
00:12:31
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| And when everybody hears that they're doing great, you've got to stay in the fight, you don't really have that kind of crosstalk, which we really need. | ||
| So I do think the SNAP thing is shocking. | ||
| Also, I have to say, putting up on the website something like the well has run dry is so cruel, so cruel. | ||
| That's designed to get us angry. | ||
| But again, I think we need to get to work. | ||
| One other aspect of the shutdown and of the House not being in is the delayed swearing in of Arizona Representative Grajalva, Democrat. | ||
| Senator Curtis, is it a mistake to delay her swearing in? | ||
| Look, I want to be careful. | ||
| I've expressed how much I respect Speaker Johnson, but the will of the people of Arizona has spoken, right? | ||
| I think she needs to serve. | ||
| I had an opportunity to serve with Representative Grajava, who sadly passed away. | ||
| And yeah, in my opinion, the will of the people has spoken. | ||
| Let's get her to work. | ||
| Something that has become kind of an unexpected bipartisan issue is transparency around the Epstein files. | ||
| That's another thing that's been delayed by the shutdown. | ||
| Congressman, where do you stand on the need or lack thereof or maybe not when it comes to the Epstein files and what Congress should be doing here? | ||
| Well, it's a little bit tail-wagging the dog to me, but we should definitely release those files and answer all the questions about it. | ||
| I don't understand what the big deal is about it. | ||
| I know that they're working very hard to keep that from happening. | ||
| And I've heard that the reason that Speaker Johnson doesn't want to swear in Representative Electrical Halva is that she would be the 218th in deciding signature on the discharge petition that would force a vote. | ||
| I don't know if that's true, but if that's really what's holding us up from working on these important issues, other than the budget, we've got other things to do. | ||
| John and I are working on some really important forestry work that we need to get completed. | ||
| It's very bipartisan, very significant, but if it's really the Epstein files that are keeping us from going to work, I think that's insane. | ||
| Senator, what do you think? | ||
| So you'll have to understand how hypocritical this feels to us, right? | ||
| Chuck Schumer was leader. | ||
| He could have brought up those Epstein files anytime he wanted, and he didn't. | ||
| Now all of a sudden, he's got this self-righteous, yes, we need to look at the Epstein files. | ||
| So from my perspective, it's very, very self-serving and hypocritical. | ||
| He had that long runway where he could have done this if he really cared about it. | ||
| To me, it's a little bit of a red herring. | ||
| Now, I'm not into the nuances of what's happening on the House on this. | ||
| I tend to feel like I'm not sure what we're hiding, right? | ||
| Like, so generally, I'm of that perspective of like, let's see what's there. | ||
| I understand there's some degree of protection for victims. | ||
| I understand there's some degree of protection for people who may have innocently been listed. | ||
| I think we can deal with that. | ||
| But the American people, I think, are feeling this sense of something's being hidden. | ||
| I sure wish under Leader Schumer, under his leadership, he would have brought this forward and would have been able to do it. | ||
| So there isn't disagreement on process, but agreement on the fact that there should be more transparency and the files should be released. | ||
| I want to talk about one of the big headlines out of this week. | ||
| We talked about it as it relates to the shutdown, but the president has been in Asia for most of this week. | ||
| He's back now, including these high-stakes talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping. | ||
| The big headline is what happened before the meeting, actually. | ||
| Trump instructed the Defense Department to begin testing nuclear weapons on an equal basis with other countries. | ||
| The U.S. hasn't tested nuclear weapons since 1992. | ||
| Senator Curtis, I'm curious what you think. | ||
| What is he doing here? | ||
| Listen, I've learned over time, never tried to out-guess what the president's doing, right? | ||
| I'm not asking you to be psychiatrists here, but I don't know. | ||
| But no, I mean, this is a hard thing, I think, for everybody is to understand really where President Trump is going with something. | ||
| Is it hyperbole? | ||
| Is it something that we're really going to do? | ||
| And I think a lot of us spend quite a bit of our days trying to explain that. | ||
| And so I've kind of learned, like, let's see how this really plays out, right? | ||
| I mean, we're a long ways away from actually nuclear testing. | ||
| And I think we'll have an opportunity between now and then to weigh in on whether that's a good idea or a bad idea. | ||
| The other story of what is actually happening is this trade war with China. | ||
| I want you guys to take a listen to the president talking about the deal that they made as it relates to fentanyl. | ||
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unidentified
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Watch. | |
| Do you know I put a 20% tariff on China because of the fentanyl coming in, which is a big tariff? | ||
| And based on his statements today, I reduced it by 10%. | ||
| So it's 10% instead of 20% effective immediately. | ||
| I believe he's going to work very hard to stop the death that's coming in. | ||
| There's a lot to dig into with our relationship with China. | ||
| But as it comes to this fentanyl issue, Senator Curtis, how big of a breakthrough is this? | ||
| Well, I'm going to put this in that same category, right? | ||
| What you just asked me about the nuclear. | ||
| Like, there's a lot between his efforts and where we need to go. | ||
| Like, who in the United States can applaud the effort, right? | ||
| We all know this is a serious problem, and we need to make changes. | ||
| And I think this is one where Congress really stands ready ourselves to participate in anything we can do, particularly with the fentanyl crisis, and how we can turn this. | ||
| I mean, we're losing so many Americans. | ||
| I think it's over $100,000 a year to fentanyl deaths. | ||
| And so I think we can all agree with this goal. | ||
| And let's see what the President can do. | ||
| Let's see what Congress can do. | ||
| Because this is something American people would really like us to see us move forward. | ||
| The ongoing trade war seems like it's starting to rile up a lot of members on both sides of the aisle, especially folks in farm country. | ||
| I'm curious, Congressman Peters, how are your constituents, I know San Diego that does have some farm country, I don't know how much is in your district, but how are folks in your area being impacted by these tariffs? | ||
| Well, tariffs are a tax on American consumers, and we're going to see higher prices. | ||
| But I would just say two things in reaction to what John said is I think this is illegal to do on his own. | ||
| I think what we're going to see is the Supreme Court say, no, these tariffs are not set under emergency conditions that the president can use. | ||
| He's doing this on his own without the input of Congress. | ||
| This is Congress's job. | ||
| And I think John and I should be involved in discussing how we should use tariffs strategically. | ||
| This notion of putting tariffs on our friends and starting this trade war, I think is really backfiring in a lot of ways. | ||
| And Congress is supposed to be involved in it. | ||
| We're actually supposed to be responsible for it. | ||
| So that is a concern to me. | ||
| And I would just say, you know, I sympathize with John because he's got to interpret what the president said. | ||
| In no other presidency have we not held the president to his literal words. | ||
| And with this president, we seem to make these huge allowances for what just turns out to be BS or gas. | ||
| And I think to me, it's very, very difficult for the world and Congress and the voters to interpret exactly what this guy's doing. | ||
| But with respect to tariffs, there's a congressional role that he's ignoring. | ||
| And I hope the Supreme Court will agree with the rest of the courts, the lower courts, that this is absolutely illegal. | ||
| Yes, of course I went away. | ||
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unidentified
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Yes. | |
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| So look, the reality of it is last November, we elected a disruptor. | ||
| Nobody voted for President Trump not knowing what he was. | ||
| Everybody that voted for him knew that he would do tariffs, right? | ||
| Everybody knew that they were. | ||
| Tariff is his favorite word. | ||
| Yeah, right. | ||
| Like, we knew that from Trump on. | ||
| So nobody should be surprised, right, that this is a tool that he's using. | ||
| We knew he was a disruptor. | ||
| We knew he liked to blow things up and then go put them back together. | ||
| We knew all of those things, right? | ||
| And that's what America asked for, not by small measure. | ||
| And so I do think it's important to remind ourselves from time to time, like this was a conscious decision America made to bring him in. | ||
| There were a lot of things people were unhappy with at the time, what was happening at the border, what was happening with the economy, and I think that's what caused this. | ||
| So when he's a disruptor, right? | ||
| Like, yeah, it can be hard to hang on to. | ||
| But when talking about congressional authority, like should Congress reassert its authority over trade agreements? | ||
| Here is the reality. | ||
| We gave up our tariff authority to the president twice over the years, right? | ||
| Now, I do agree with Scott. | ||
| The Supreme Court's going to weigh in on this. | ||
| And look, I'm whatever they... | ||
| But Congress could weigh in on it, too. | ||
| I mean, I think you actually voted against a couple proposals that would reverse the tariffs. | ||
| If you're going to change that, you need 60 votes in the House and you need a veto-proof. | ||
| So it's a sham to say, right, that these votes will somehow overturn that. | ||
| You've got to have a veto-proof number of people coming from us to the president to overturn it. | ||
| And you don't have that. | ||
| Everybody knows we don't have that. | ||
| So let's deal with what we have. | ||
| Years ago, we gave up some of this veto authority, right? | ||
| Let's let the Supreme Court weigh in. | ||
| Let's see what authority the president has. | ||
| If we want to work on a long-term change, I'm game, right? | ||
| Like, I think we can all see when Congress gave this, deceded some of this to the president. | ||
| We can now see some of the things that we could do better. | ||
| Like, let's have that conversation. | ||
| But, like, to put a symbolic bill on the floor that would somehow take this away from the president, everybody knows that's just a feel-good. | ||
| Do you worry though that some of these disruptive moves, for example, the Argentinian beef issue that is potentially going to hurt ranchers here in America? | ||
| Is something like that a concern for you and for Republicans at large as you look towards midterms and farmers and other voters getting frustrated? | ||
| Yeah, I think, listen, ranchers have had a hard, hard go at it for a number of years. | ||
| And they have one good year, right? | ||
| And we want to take it away from them. | ||
| I don't think we should balance inflation on the back of ranchers. | ||
| That's why Congress should be involved. | ||
| And I think the same with the soybean farmers. | ||
| I mean, this is, I understand that we all expected a disruptor. | ||
| I certainly did. | ||
| But I don't think anyone anticipated spending more on Argentina than the entire foreign aid budget for U.S. aid from a guy who said America first. | ||
| So, and with respect to 60 votes, look, if we were looking out for the institution without regard to who is president, we should have 89 votes. | ||
| I just think we should all agree as an institution, let's remember as an institution first, not Republicans versus Democrats, that Congress has this role and we should trust ourselves to do it and we should assert that authority. | ||
| So I know that Republicans who represent cattle ranchers and soybean farmers are not happy and didn't expect this from this president. | ||
| And I think the way that we deal with that is we reassert congressional authority. | ||
| And I think we should do it by more than 60 votes in the name of the institution, not in the name of a particular political party. | ||
| Congressman Peters, before I let you go, I do want to ask you about Prop 50 redistricting in California. | ||
| It's not going to impact your seat, I believe, but some of your colleagues, it will. | ||
| Are you in support of this measure from Democrats? | ||
| Yeah, I think it's a terrible thing to do, and I think we have to do it. | ||
| I think you've got President Trump who asked Texas to do it, and now other states. | ||
| I'm really happy with the independent redistricting. | ||
| My district will become more conservative. | ||
| I'm willing to take that on, but I just wish, and I think John might agree with this too, I wish that we were not so at each other's throats from a political perspective. | ||
|
Price Consequences Matter
00:15:49
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||
| We've made, sometimes I think that the biggest enemy of us is each other. | ||
| And this is really unhealthy. | ||
| The notion that we're really just trying to eliminate the other party is really bad. | ||
| But I do think that in this case, California had to respond. | ||
| So I'll support that. | ||
| And I expect it to pass on November 4th. | ||
| And then we'll talk about real issues again. | ||
| All right, Congressman Peters, beaming in from San Diego, my hometown. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| And thank you to you, Senator Curtis of Utah, for being here in person with us. | ||
| Thanks, everybody. | ||
| Let's turn now to this week's C-SPAN Flashback, where we dig deep into the video archives to show you a moment in political history that's eerily similar to what's happening today. | ||
| As we noted, President Trump was in Asia all this past week, culminating in his sit-down with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Thursday. | ||
| So today, we thought we'd take you back to 1984, when former President Ronald Reagan traveled to China for a high-stakes visit. | ||
| Here's the former president on cooperating with China. | ||
| We may live at nearly opposite ends of the world. | ||
| We may be distinctly different in language, customs, and political beliefs. | ||
| But on many vital questions of our time, there is little difference between the American and Chinese people. | ||
| Indeed, I believe if we were to ask citizens all over this world what they desire most for their children and for their children's children, their answer in English, Chinese, or any language would likely be the same. | ||
| We want peace. | ||
| We want freedom. | ||
| We want a better life. | ||
| Their dreams, so simply stated, represent mankind's deepest aspirations for security and personal fulfillment. | ||
| And helping them make their dreams come true is what our jobs are all about. | ||
| We can work together as equals in a spirit of mutual respect and mutual benefit. | ||
| I believe in Chinese you say, hu Jing, Hu Wei. | ||
| Well, America and China are both great nations. | ||
| And we have a special responsibility to preserve world peace. | ||
| During this speech, Reagan highlighted how the two nations' bilateral trade showed great promise for the future. | ||
| Trade, of course, is the big focus of President Trump's visit to Asia. | ||
| And we've got two political pros from both sides of the aisle to talk about that trip and other hot topics of the week. | ||
| We've got Republican strategist Brendan Buck and Democratic strategist and pollster Anna Greenberg. | ||
| I'm going to look to both of you to peel back the curtain on what each of your parties is doing and why they are doing it. | ||
| You're here, not in your surrogate capacity, but as strategists to kind of get analytical with us and nerd out a bit. | ||
| So we just heard from President Reagan. | ||
| What is the goal when presidents do these big high-stakes trips? | ||
| What is the impact on perceptions back home? | ||
| Let's start with you. | ||
| I love that throwback. | ||
| Obviously, the sort of imagery that he showed there, I think, was powerful, and it showed the United States as a leader. | ||
| And I think that's what Donald Trump is obviously trying to do here. | ||
| It showed that we are sort of a dominant force in the world. | ||
| We are setting the agenda, but also he understands he's got a huge political stake here and how these negotiations with China go. | ||
| He made a big bet that we can go into China and sort of bully them around, push them around a little bit, and China has pushed back a lot themselves. | ||
| The president was elected on cost of living. | ||
| I mean, I think that it boils down to people were very concerned about the cost of living. | ||
| And one of his responses has been to go on this sort of trade war. | ||
| Tariffs from China and this issue is going to, I think, pay significant, have significant consequences in the midterms if prices don't come down. | ||
| And so when China started fighting back, I think it probably got their attention a lot. | ||
| So he's trying to sort of reset. | ||
| And the question is, is this a game you can even win? | ||
| You know, Donald Trump engaging with China in this way has shown that maybe we can't push them around. | ||
| Maybe we do need to actually work with them in the same way that Ronald Reagan was talking about there. | ||
| Still very unclear how this deal is shaking out, very unclear what he got, very unclear whether this is going to ease the price increases that we've been feeling. | ||
| But clearly he's trying to sort of lean in and assert American control, but also find a bit of an exit ramp off of the high prices that we're seeing. | ||
| Yeah, I think the actual outcome, practically, tactically, from this is going to matter a lot. | ||
| And I wonder, you know, Democrats have been hammering the issue of health care, and we'll get to that and the shutdown in a minute. | ||
| But how much do you think tariffs and the result of that and the result of this meeting is actually going to play in the midterms? | ||
| And should Democrats be talking about the economy and those tariffs more? | ||
| I think tariffs are going to matter a lot. | ||
| And people, you know, it's interesting because it's really hard to understand the economy. | ||
| It's really hard to understand why inflation goes up and down and why the market goes up and down. | ||
| What people understand is they understand that tariffs affect costs to consumers. | ||
| No matter what the president and others want to say about if the cost is being borne by the people importing, you know, exporting here or, you know, the retailers, people understand that tariffs raise their prices. | ||
| And so it's actually sort of directly in contradiction to kind of the affordability agenda that President Trump ran on. | ||
| I think the challenge for him is exactly what Brendan said, is that you can't really push around China. | ||
| They have a lot of power. | ||
| And moreover, even if this deal eases some of the restrictions on soybeans, it's not a spigot. | ||
| You can't just like turn on the spigot and soybeans all of a sudden go to China. | ||
| I'm not an expert on the farm economy or trade, but I think they've harvested already and they're in storage. | ||
| And so he's trying to deal with an immediate political problem with these kind of rural Republican states and rural Republican allies of his. | ||
| And it doesn't just sort of happen like that. | ||
| So I think he's going there to try to solve a problem of his own making. | ||
| Not clear that it actually did. | ||
| I would also just say that one of the things about Reagan that was so brilliant, it was always so on message. | ||
| So Trump does this trip, maybe gets some deals, and then immediately talks about testing nuclear weapons. | ||
| I mean, so I don't really understand how you can actually get something out of that trip if you, the day you come back or you start talking about something that nobody wants. | ||
| He mentioned that just before his meeting with Xi. | ||
| So I wonder, Brendan, what you think. | ||
| That timing is not coincidental, right? | ||
| He clearly thought about that. | ||
| I talk a lot about sort of the madman theory of foreign relations that Trump seems to be mostly adhering to. | ||
| But strategically, what do you think that was meant to do? | ||
| Hard to say strategically because he came out of this meeting trying to talk about we just had this great success with China, and I think that's what a lot of Republicans were hoping he would be able to say. | ||
| I think everybody sort of wants him to de-escalate a lot of these fights that he's picking. | ||
| And that is certainly not a way to de-escalate. | ||
| It would be the first time that the United States tested nuclear weapons in 30 years. | ||
| 1992 is the last time. | ||
| I mean, I'm not convinced that there is a strategy all the time when he says things. | ||
| I mean, maybe there is. | ||
| The strategy may just sort of be like, look at me. | ||
| I mean, that could be an element of it. | ||
| But I mean, to this point, one of the issues that we've run into specifically with China is that he's saying we had a great deal today. | ||
| What frustrates a lot of people is that in three days something might happen and he'll be back on the warpath against, rhetorically, against China, and we may have tariffs going up again. | ||
| And that's what I think a lot of Republicans are ready for Trump to sort of back away from this trade war. | ||
| Find a solution. | ||
| Save face. | ||
| Whatever fig leaf you need. | ||
| We don't need to do this because it's hurting, as you said, farm states and a lot of constituencies that Republicans care a lot about. | ||
| They would like everybody to cool their jets a little. | ||
| The question is, can he do that? | ||
| Is he disciplined enough to do that? | ||
| Are we another week away from another escalation of the trade war? | ||
| That's bad for the economy. | ||
| It's bad for consumers. | ||
| It's bad for people to invest. | ||
| So how long this lasts? | ||
| That's the open question that I'm really worried about. | ||
| There's a resolution in the Senate this week to block President Trump's tariffs on foreign countries. | ||
| Some Republicans are joining in with Democrats on that, but it likely is not going to be taken up in the House, and Trump can certainly veto it. | ||
| So it's not going to go anywhere. | ||
| So what's the strategy here? | ||
| For who? | ||
| For Democrats. | ||
| For Democrats? | ||
| Well, I think you just have to talk about all the ways that he's actually hurt the economy and his pilot's policies have increased prices for people. | ||
| And we know that people are hurting. | ||
| I just finished up. | ||
| So this resolution is a way to put that in action. | ||
| And the messaging has to be around what does it if people don't react unless it affects them personally or they feel that it affects them personally. | ||
| People need to understand the tariffs affect them personally. | ||
| So all the messaging has to be not about process and who has the power to do tariffs and who doesn't. | ||
| Constitutionally, it's about this policy hurts you. | ||
| And we're seeing this very, very clearly with story after story, certainly in the farm states of farmers being upset, you know, obviously legitimately upset, not just about soybeans, but about importing Argentinian beef. | ||
| People have to see how this affects them directly. | ||
| That's what Democrats have to do. | ||
| How does this affect you, your pocketbook, your bottom line? | ||
| Well, speaking about things that impact people directly, let's talk about the shutdown this week. | ||
| We are going to see on November 1st, SNAP benefits. | ||
| Millions of people could lose those benefits. | ||
| The ACA marketplace enrollment is beginning. | ||
| So there's a real date now, a deadline to when people are going to start actually feeling this thing. | ||
| Brendan, let me start with you. | ||
| How do you think Republicans are doing in the messaging and in the tactics around the shutdown? | ||
| Well, I think as having worked in two different speakers' office that had dealt with shutdowns, I think they are doing the right thing as their position, which is when you're in the majority, you cannot give something to the minority, be held ransom, have the government held ransom, or else we're going to have a shutdown every year because the minority party thinks they can get something out of it. | ||
| And so I understand why Jon Thune and Mike Johnson are saying. | ||
| Whatever you want to talk about, we'll talk about after the government opens up because if they pay that price, they'll just know that that's going to keep coming. | ||
| They're going to have to keep paying a price every time we do this. | ||
| Now, at the same time, clearly what they're doing to sort of win this isn't working. | ||
| What Democrats are doing isn't working. | ||
| I mean, nobody's getting anything out of this. | ||
| And I'm kind of blown away that we're this far into it without anybody really meaningfully changing their position on this. | ||
| Well, it's funny because what I hear from Democrats is they feel like they're winning. | ||
| They're putting up the fight that their voters want. | ||
| What I hear from Republicans is like, we're winning. | ||
| We're making Democrats look really bad in this. | ||
| You're saying neither is winning. | ||
| And you're the pollster here. | ||
| Who do you think is losing? | ||
| Americans are. | ||
| That's one thing that's interesting. | ||
| Which party do you think is going to come out of this looking better? | ||
| It's a good question. | ||
| It's hard to answer because we don't know how it all is going to unfold. | ||
| And the longer it goes on, you know, you could see blame sort of shifting around. | ||
| Right now, I think it's hurting more. | ||
| Right now, if you look at the average of the polling, Republicans by five to ten points, depending on the poll, are who people are blaming, right? | ||
| And so Democrats are in the minority. | ||
| And I think it's sort of one of the funnier things I heard out of Mike Johnson's mouth was Democrats are in control of the government. | ||
| I don't know if you remember when you said this last week. | ||
| And so it is, Americans actually understand that Democrats aren't actually in control of the government and the Republicans are in control. | ||
| And it is hard for them to understand why when you have unified control, they can't keep the government open. | ||
| I don't know who's winning and losing. | ||
| What I would say is that for Democrats, it was really important to stand their ground. | ||
| One of the biggest challenges that Democrats have with their base is that they Democrats are weak. | ||
| They're not fighting. | ||
| and not fighting hard enough and you know whether that's fair or not that's absolutely and so when you look at democratic approval ratings versus republican democrats are a little bit weaker It's partly because Democrats are critical of themselves. | ||
| Republicans aren't that critical of themselves. | ||
| And so if you had another, for instance, when Schumer decided to pass the last CR, there was just, it was the anger in the base. | ||
| And so that was part of it. | ||
| The second is Democrats, I think, have to stand up for the principle that we're not going to cut people off their health care. | ||
| It's not like it's being shut down over a small issue. | ||
| It's being shut down of something that doesn't just affect the people who get the ACA credits. | ||
| It affects every other person who has insurance because they are going to have to cover the people who don't have insurance. | ||
| And there's a whole lot of other reasons why premiums are going to go up. | ||
| And so I think Democrats have to have a line in the sand around, now, are they going to win on this? | ||
| I have no idea. | ||
| But I think it is very important for voters to see that Democrats took a stand on an issue that affects on something that affects people deeply, personally, and tragically in some cases. | ||
| So they've done that now. | ||
| Now that this November 1st deadline, that is really, I mean, people are going to start to feel real pain. | ||
| Is there an off-ramp then? | ||
| Do they say, like, okay, we made a stand, we have the second, or maybe this is going to be the longest shutdown in history. | ||
| We got our message out. | ||
| People are talking about health care again. | ||
| Let's get back to it. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know the answer to that question. | ||
| I'd be in Congress right now if I had the answer for the off-ramp. | ||
| But I do think that there are inflection points like November 1st with open enrollment and SNAP benefits running out. | ||
| There's another inflection point, which is the CR the House passed, is also going to come. | ||
| I think it's November 21st. | ||
| So it's possible the off-ramp is that expired. | ||
| It didn't pass, but that deadline passes. | ||
| Then they all have to come together for a new CR. | ||
| It's possible at that point. | ||
| But I would just say, Donald Trump has shown zero interest in being a mediator and a deal maker on this. | ||
| And he's been In Asia, and he's been in the Middle East, and he's not talking about it. | ||
| And I think that Mike Johnson takes his marching orders from Trump. | ||
| And so it's very hard to see when there's a pretty united front. | ||
| I think Thune is different. | ||
| I think he would be willing to make some compromises when there's literally nothing on the table. | ||
| And I think that if you ask voters what they want, at the end of the day, they want people to work together to get things done. | ||
| And so I think that that is a real problem for the Republicans. | ||
| President Trump has been hands-off here. | ||
| What do you think he's trying to do there strategically? | ||
| Should he get in the game here? | ||
| Well, I think Republican leaders are keeping him out of all of this. | ||
| I think he wants to probably be engaged. | ||
| He likes making deals, but I think Thune and Johnson understand that he probably would make a deal, and they don't want that right now. | ||
| As I said before, they don't want to give a price for keeping the government open. | ||
| But Democrats have run into this problem where it's easy to go into a government shutdown. | ||
| It's much harder to get out of it. | ||
| And you have to know what your sort of end game is. | ||
| And if it is all about making a point, I would argue you've made your point. | ||
| And then you have to figure out what you're now going to do about it. | ||
| But I think it has gone on this long because nobody is winning politically in a meaningful way. | ||
| Like government shutdown, the government shutdown in 2013 ended because we were getting our butt kicked every single day. | ||
| And at some point, we just kind of threw in the towel. | ||
| And that's usually how government shutdowns end, is they're very intense. | ||
| One side is just getting beat up so bad that they give up, but nobody's really getting beat up so bad. | ||
| So that's fine politically. | ||
| I don't know that there's any long-term political impact, but we can't be shut down forever. | ||
| So what is your actual game plan? | ||
| I firmly believe that Johnson and Thune are never going to give anything other than a promise to act on health care later, just for all the reasons I said. | ||
| They can't do it at the same time. | ||
| So at some point, Democrats probably just sort of need to take yes for an answer and then go work on that. | ||
| I mean, Donald Trump has said he wants to work on it. | ||
| Whether or not they have the trust that exists there, but I don't know if the trust is just going to magically materialize. | ||
| You've made your point. | ||
| So at some point, you just say, okay, the base understands that I fought. | ||
|
Blue Wave Energy
00:09:20
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| We had the longest, potentially the longest government shutdown of all time. | ||
| What else can we do? | ||
| And then move on. | ||
| Let's get out of Washington for a second. | ||
| We've got off-year elections on Tuesday. | ||
| Governors races in Virginia and New Jersey. | ||
| I want to show you this quote from the Wall Street Journal here writing, Democratic leaders hoping to revive the party's fortunes this fall pinned their hopes on two gubernatorial candidates, Mikey Sherrill in New Jersey and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia. | ||
| The wager is looking increasingly risky. | ||
| Spanberger and Cheryl still hold leads over their opponents, but their relative underperformance stands in contrast to what is shaping up to be a runaway victory in the New York mayoral elections. | ||
| Are Democrats panicking at all? | ||
| No. | ||
| Look, I mean, first of all, there's lots of indicators around Democratic enthusiasm in participating in these off-year elections. | ||
| First of all, we've had over 30 special elections since the beginning of 2025, and Democrats have overperformed from 15 to 18 points on average across all of that. | ||
| So we're already seeing just in specials, just like we did in 2017, Democratic enthusiasm around participating. | ||
| We then have a Democratic primary in both New York and New Jersey, and even Virginia to some degree, even though that primary, there wasn't a primary at the top of the ticket, with massive turnout and not just massive turnout of Democrats, but massive turnout of new voters. | ||
| And I'm not talking about people who've turned 18 and through motor voter have been registered. | ||
| I'm talking about people who vote in midterms and presidentials deciding to vote in an off-year election. | ||
| So we thought turnout would be around 500,000 in the New Jersey Democratic primary. | ||
| It was 850,000. | ||
| And so if you look at the new voters, there's about 225,000 new people in the electorate who will vote in this general election, and there's 70, 30 versus Republican. | ||
| And if you look in New Jersey, but also in New Mexico, which I didn't even realize was having off-year elections until recently, but New Mexico and in Pennsylvania, you see that each case, vote by mail and early vote, which I understand there's lots of dangers around using that as a prediction of the future. | ||
| But in each case, they are outperforming Republicans, you know, in some cases by a massive degree. | ||
| So in New Mexico, Democratic turnout's up seven and Republican is down seven. | ||
| So in all of these places, the early vote is showing sort of blue wave energy. | ||
| And then the final thing I think I would just say about I don't understand why these races are being covered as toss-ups. | ||
| I mean, Abuelos Van Berger has been ahead eight to 10 points and really hasn't changed. | ||
| And if you take Republican polls out of the New Jersey average, that hasn't changed. | ||
| And my last poll has it 5240. | ||
| Chidarelli's not going to get 40, obviously. | ||
| But because of these new voters and because of the reaction to Trump in power, I just think this is going to be not close. | ||
| And I find the kind of, I think this is wish casting, but I don't think it's going to be close. | ||
| Well, that's what history would have it be, right? | ||
| In a sort of off-year election with a new president, usually the party out of power does really well, and it's very clear that they're on the march. | ||
| Jack Chitterelli is in a purple-blue state, whatever you want to call it, and he's not running away from Donald Trump in a way that you normally would see the Republican do in a state like that. | ||
| And so that's very interesting to me that he's- Why is that, you think? | ||
| Well, I think, well, first of all, Donald Trump came very close to winning New Jersey in the last election, and I think he has learned that sort of running away is never, when Donald Trump dominates a party so much, turning off Trump supporters is probably not a good play. | ||
| But the fact that it's, you say it's not as close, but it seems closer than you would think it would be in an off-year election like this, is a warning sign, I think, for Democrats. | ||
| Now, if Democrats just trounce the Republicans this time, I think the conversation around the midterms is going to feel very different. | ||
| But I guess I will concede this to Democrats. | ||
| In a midterm election, talk about next year, you want to have energy on your side. | ||
| That's what we had in 2010 when we took back the House, the Tea Party movement. | ||
| It feels very, very similar. | ||
| We had a bunch of rallies and marches and things like that. | ||
| And it made life very difficult when we won because the party was very unruly. | ||
| But at least electorally, that helped. | ||
| It's very clear the Democrats have energy. | ||
| They have all these rallies taking place. | ||
| And so that may be enough alone to take back the House. | ||
| And I think Democrats probably will take back the House. | ||
| But there is still this, I think, uncertainty among a lot of voters about is the Democratic Party today one that I can trust? | ||
| It feels much further to the left than the Democratic Party of Barack Obama's era. | ||
| And I think that continues to hinder them. | ||
| And then that's why Republicans are latching onto Mamdani in New York. | ||
| He's a self-progressed Democratic socialist. | ||
| That is going to be something that they're going to use and say, this is not the old Democratic Party. | ||
| It is way far to the left. | ||
| And that may just be something that an anchor that hangs around Democrats going into the midterm election. | ||
| The conflict is they have energy in their base, but is the rest of the country willing to be part of that movement? | ||
| Well, speaking of Momdani, there's a new poll that indicates that the race in New York City is heating up. | ||
| This is a Suffolk University poll out Monday showing Governor Andrew Cuomo, who's running as an independent, has cut Democrat Zora Mamdani's lead in half to 10 points. | ||
| The same poll showed Momdani led by 20 points in September. | ||
| Anna, you serve as a poll sir for Bill de Blasio. | ||
| How much do campaigns worry about polling like this so close to the end? | ||
| It is really, it's not that easy to poll in New York City. | ||
| And I have a lot of respect for a lot of the polling outfits that poll in this race, but they don't, I don't want to get, did you really want to nerd out? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you want to nerd out on polling out? | ||
| Why don't we do it? | ||
| It's really important that you actually call people from the voter file. | ||
| In other words, we have a list of people who vote and we know what kind of elections they vote in and we can have a pretty good sense. | ||
| Not perfect. | ||
| That's why polls are usually a little bit wrong because we can't perfectly predict turnout. | ||
| And so when pollsters poll in the New York City mayor's race and they do not use the voter file, they are getting lower information voters and non-voters in their polls. | ||
| I believe that the higher quality voter five holes show a bigger lead for Mamdani because that electorate is more ideological and more left and more engaged. | ||
| So my guess is that Mondabi is probably ahead by more than 10, but you would imagine it would shrink to some degree because Eric Adams dropped out of the race. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And Eric Adams and Andrew Cuomo shared a base among black voters. | ||
| And so black voters, if they're moving to Cuomo, which I assume some of them are, is going to shrink the margin between him and Mamdani. | ||
| It's just inevitable, right? | ||
| There are sets of voters in New York City who do not want to vote for Mamdani. | ||
| And if they're not going to vote for Adams, Orthodox Jews are probably going to vote they were with Adams. | ||
| They're probably going to vote with Cuomo. | ||
| So it's inevitable that it's going to shrink. | ||
| From your experience working with the de Blasio campaign, do you see any parallels between some of the talking points, the messaging between Momdani and de Blasio? | ||
| Yes and no. | ||
| Certainly they are both progressive and both had very big ideas about changes they wanted to make. | ||
| You know, Bill ran on taxing the rich to fund pre-K and stopping stop and frisk. | ||
| And Mamdani talks about rent freezes, which is something that actually Bill de Blasio got was a rent freeze. | ||
| I think they both have the similar challenge that the things they want, certainly Bill faced it, but the similar challenge is that they can't do the things they're saying they want to do, that Albany has to do it. | ||
| And so there will be a governing challenge for him because the things that he's talking about, which relate to affordability, which is obviously a huge concern for people in New York, are not things the city council and the mayor can do. | ||
| Do you worry about what Mamdani might open the door to for Republicans? | ||
| Clearly, your party, Brendan, is really latching on to Mamdani, trying to elevate him as a face of the Democratic Party. | ||
| Does that concern you? | ||
| Not really. | ||
| I mean, the same thing happened when Bill de Blasio got elected mayor. | ||
| It was like, oh, dude, it was Warren and de Blasio, and oh my God, the Democrats are going to be so far left and lose everything. | ||
| And then in 2018, we take back the House. | ||
| And certainly do very well and have done very well at the state level and governors' races and that sort of thing. | ||
| So it actually has not been a bad few decades for Democrats. | ||
| It has at the presidential level, but actually at the state level, it hasn't been as bad. | ||
| And so I'm not particularly concerned about it. | ||
| The women who are running for governor in New Jersey and Virginia are actually moderates. | ||
| They are not DSA. | ||
| So I think they'll try to do it, but I don't think it's going to be all that successful. | ||
| Let's talk about maybe the most controversial issue of the week, and that is daylight savings time. | ||
| Most Americans will see their clocks fall back an hour this weekend. | ||
| The goal is more sunlight in the morning. | ||
| It's a polarizing topic, though. | ||
| There have been efforts in Congress to end the time change. | ||
| President Trump indicated Republicans will try to eliminate daylight savings, but now he's walked that back a little bit. | ||
| Take a listen. | ||
| It's a 50-50 issue. | ||
| And if something's a 50-50 issue, it's hard to get excited about it. | ||
| I assume people would like to have more light later, but some people want to have more light earlier because they don't want to take their kids to school in the dark. | ||
|
Why Eliminate Daylight Savings?
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| And it's very much, it's a little bit one way, but it's very much a 50-50 issue. | ||
| And it's something I can do, but a lot of people like it one way. | ||
| A lot of people like it the other way. | ||
| It's very even. | ||
| And usually I find when that's the case, what else do we have to do? | ||
| All right, I hate to put you both in the hot seat, but eliminate daylight savings time? | ||
| No, I mean, people talk about it as though it's a way to gain light. | ||
| The light is the same no matter what we do. | ||
| It's dictated by our path around the sun, not Congress. | ||
| So it feels very silly. | ||
| No, as he points out, it will get dark or get light very late in the morning if we mess anything. | ||
| So just leave it alone. | ||
| You're not gaining light one way or the other. | ||
|
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Anna? | |
| Gosh, it's like the one thing I have no opinion on. | ||
| So I'm a friend of mine. | ||
| Leave it as it is. | ||
| Dodging the question. | ||
| Okay, I see. | ||
| Too hot a topic for you. | ||
| I want to end with a segment we have here called Not On My Bingo Card, where we highlight some of the unexpected, quirky moments that have become very common in our politics these days. | ||
| And this week, not on my bingo card, was Trump's dance moves in Malaysia. | ||
| Take a look. | ||
| Some Malaysian performers were on hand to greet the president after Air Force One touched down in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for the first stop on his Asia trip. | ||
| He walks up to the display and quickly decides to join in with the celebration, breaking out some of his famed dance moves we've all seen on the campaign trail. | ||
| Clearly in a celebratory mood before he met with some of the leaders in the region, the White House even posted on X about the viral moment, writing Trump Dance Malaysia version. | ||
| The president's special assistant wrote eight years with President Trump, and this may just be my favorite video captured. | ||
| You guys want to break out any of your signature dance moves, Anna? | ||
| My children definitely don't want me doing that on television. | ||
| But, you know, he likes to have fun. | ||
| I will say this about Donald Trump. | ||
| He likes to have fun. | ||
| And I think that's him having fun. | ||
| Yeah, this is why people like him. | ||
| I mean, he could go and he could be awkward and stiff and stare at them as a lot of politicians would do. | ||
| Or he's going to have some fun. | ||
| He's not the, you know, he's, what, near 80? | ||
| The fact that he can even move that well is pretty good. | ||
| So I give him credit for having that. | ||
| I became kind of known at Trump rallies for my dance moves, and I'd be in front of the camera like in between hits. | ||
| And, you know, Ayah the Tiger is blasting. | ||
| I'd do a little bit of a title. | ||
| Why did he show us? | ||
| That'll be for my own special dance. | ||
| That'll be, I'll save that for a very special episode of Ceasefire. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Brendan Buck, Republican strategist, and Anna Greenberg, Democratic strategist. | ||
| Both of you, thank you so much for joining Ceasefire. | ||
| And we'll close this week's program with our ceasefire moment of the week. | ||
| Members from both sides of the aisle held a press conference on the latest effort to protect children from AI chatbots. | ||
| Republican Senator Josh Hawley and Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal spoke on the importance of bipartisanship for their bill. | ||
| The legislation that we are introducing today is very simple. | ||
| It just says this, that no AI chatbot companion should be targeted at children who are younger than 18 years of age. | ||
| It is a tremendous, tremendous honor to have bipartisan support from such distinguished members of Congress who are standing here to my right and to my left. | ||
| My very good friend, Senator Blumenthal, he and I have partnered together on so many things through the years. | ||
|
Democracy's Watchdogs
00:03:16
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| He has been a champion when it comes to taking on these companies and AI. | ||
| I want to thank Senator Hawley for his leadership. | ||
| We have a partnership that I think has been extraordinarily important. | ||
| We have a framework for establishing some oversight and scrutiny on AI, a partnership that has produced this legislation as one piece of what we think is necessary to prevent some of the excesses and abuses that flow from AI, | ||
| not to stop new technology, but simply to make sure that the values and interests of Americans and people all over the world are preserved as this new technology advances. | ||
| Well, would you look at that? | ||
| Senators on both sides of the aisle coming together on important legislation despite the ongoing government shutdown. | ||
| That's all the time we have for this episode. | ||
| Join us next time as I sit down with former Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazil and former Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel. | ||
| And a reminder, Ceasefire is also available as a podcast. | ||
| Find us in all of the usual places. | ||
| I'm Dasha Burns. | ||
| Remember whether or not you agree. | ||
| Keep talking and keep listening. | ||
|
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C-SPAN's Washington Journal, a live forum inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington, D.C. and across the country. | |
| Coming up Monday morning, we'll talk about day 34 of the government shutdown with Newsweek White House reporter Daniel Bush and Notice Congressional Reporter Daniela Diaz. | ||
| And then Arms Control Association Executive Director Darrell Kimball on President Trump's decision to resume U.S. nuclear weapons testing. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal. | ||
| Join the conversation live at 7 Eastern Monday morning on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| On Wednesday, the Supreme Court hears oral argument in a case examining President Trump's tariffs. | ||
| Live at 10 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, and c-span.org. | ||
| Democracy is always an unfinished creation. | ||
| Democracy is worth dying for. | ||
| Democracy belongs to us all. | ||
| We are here in the sanctuary of democracy. | ||
| Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies. | ||
| American democracy is bigger than any one person. | ||
| Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected. | ||
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We are still at our core a democracy. | |
| This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom. | ||
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C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | |