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unidentified
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C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | |
| We're funded by these television companies and more, including Comcast. | ||
| The flag replacement program got started by a good friend of mine, a Navy vet, who saw the flag at the office that needed to be replaced and said, wouldn't this be great if this was going to be something that we did for anyone? | ||
| Comcast has always been a community-driven company. | ||
| This is one of those great examples of the way we're getting out there. | ||
| Comcast supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy. | ||
| Joining us now to discuss election administration and security is David Becker. | ||
| He is the founder and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research. | ||
| David, thank you so much for being with us this morning. | ||
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| You have been on the program several times before, but always good to remind our audience about your organization. | ||
| Tell us the mission, who you work with, and how you're funded. | ||
| So I've worked in elections for over 25 years now. | ||
| I used to be a Justice Department lawyer in the voting section of the Civil Rights Division. | ||
| I worked at the Pew Charitable Trust for a while working on their election initiatives. | ||
| And about 10 years ago, I founded the Center for Election Innovation and Research. | ||
| And we are a nonpartisan nonprofit that works with election officials all over the country, from the secretaries of state down to your local clerks, to help them in their work to ensure elections that voters should trust and do trust. | ||
| And what we've seen over the past 20 years in particular is we've made remarkable progress as a nation on the should trust part. | ||
| Our elections are as secure, transparent, and verifiable as they've ever been. | ||
| But unfortunately, because of so much disinformation coming from our foreign adversaries and even here at home domestically, many voters think the opposite. | ||
| And that is why you're joining us today to talk about some of these issues. | ||
| Wanted to share a post that President Trump put on Truth Social after the morning of Tuesday's election. | ||
| It says the unconstitutional redistricting vote in California is a giant scam and that the entire process, in particular, the voting itself is rigged. | ||
| All quote mail-in ballots, where the Republicans in the state are, says, in quotes, shut out, is under very serious legal and criminal review. | ||
| Stay tuned. | ||
| This post, do you know specifically what he's looking at, what the concerns are? | ||
| No, and we have to unwind some of this quite a bit. | ||
| It's, first of all, in California and in many other states, voters get mail ballots, including states that are deeply red, states like Utah, that where the legislators and the voters have decided they would like to receive mail ballots. | ||
| Every single voter who gets on the voter list has to provide ID. | ||
| That's federal law. | ||
| That's been the case since 2002. | ||
| Every single ballot goes to a registered voter. | ||
| And for that ballot to be cast if it's mail or counted if it's mail, it has to be verified in some way, usually by a signature match, occasionally by a signature match or an ID match. | ||
| There are states that have, you put your driver's license number on or something like that to include it. | ||
| So there is verifiability through every part of the process to ensure there is no fraud. | ||
| And certainly Republicans were receiving ballots just like Democrats were in that state in California in this past election. | ||
| The rules have been well known for some time. | ||
| If people had a real legal claim against the rules of the election, they could have brought it well in advance and we would have had some determination on that. | ||
| As far as the claims that he's investigating, it's really important to note that the Constitution gives power to run elections to the states. | ||
| The founders were very wise. | ||
| And after they had come out of the Revolutionary War fighting a king, they wanted to make sure that the authority to run elections was dispersed throughout the states. | ||
| And so they wrote in something called the Elections Clause, Article 1, Section 4, which says the power to regulate the time, place, and manner of elections resides with the state legislatures. | ||
| It also gives Congress power. | ||
| And of course, Congress also has dispersed authority because it represents all of the states. | ||
| Congress has not acted here. | ||
| Congress absolutely has not said mail voting isn't permitted. | ||
| The states have chosen to do so if they want to. | ||
| 36 states offer mail balloting without an excuse. | ||
| 47 states offer early in person voting. | ||
| The vast majority of states, and actually the majority of states that have significant mail voting went to President Trump in 2024. | ||
| So he can make claims on social media as much as he wants. | ||
| The problem is going to be he's going to have to go to court at some point and actually prove this to a judge and demonstrate what the facts and law are. | ||
| And the facts and law are very much on the side of the states here. | ||
| Our guest for the next 35 minutes or so is David Becker. | ||
| He is the founder, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research. | ||
| We are discussing election administration and security. | ||
| If you have a question or comment for him, you can start calling in now the lines, Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| Wanted to stay on the topic of California. | ||
| This was a headline from Politico. | ||
| It says, I'm wary about the president. | ||
| California AG sounds warning about midterm election security as we are now turning to 2026. | ||
| Now that the past Tuesday's elections are in the rearview mirror, you spoke a little bit about the federal government's role in elections and what is left up to states. | ||
| When you hear California's AG concerned, what is he concerned about? | ||
| What would he be concerned about if the federal government doesn't have oversight? | ||
| Well, the federal government doesn't have any legal oversight unless Congress has very clearly acted. | ||
| But we have seen this administration act in ways that go beyond what Congress has authorized already. | ||
| The Department of Justice is seeking to seize very sensitive personal data on hundreds of millions of voters, social security numbers, driver's license numbers, dates of birth. | ||
| That's the holy trinity of identity theft. | ||
| And the federal government is trying to seize that from at least eight states, actually many more, but eight states they've actually sued to seize that. | ||
| There is no federal authorization for the federal government to collect that information. | ||
| In fact, it appears that collection of that information may violate the Privacy Act. | ||
| And the Department of Justice has not really tried to comply with the Privacy Act yet. | ||
| That is going to go to litigation. | ||
| We'll see how that goes. | ||
| I think the states have very good cases in all of those states. | ||
| But I can understand why there are many who are worried that the federal government, that Washington, is trying to seize power over elections from the states. | ||
| I imagine that if President Biden had tried to dictate to states how they run elections, had tried to tell states that don't offer mail voting that they have to offer mail voting, to tell states that don't offer a significant number of early voting days that they have to offer more, that there would have been widespread opposition to that, and there should have been, because the president doesn't have that authority. | ||
| And so the answer to whether or not the federal government has the authority to impose these restrictions or policies on the states should not depend on the party of the president who is sitting in office. | ||
| If the answer is no for Biden, it should be no for Trump. | ||
| And we're seeing some partisan gamesmanship here. | ||
| And I think there's some concern that given that we're seeing Washington for the first time try to impose policies without Congress on the states, they're worried how far that might go. | ||
| Now, that being said, we had a really successful 2025 election. | ||
| That was largely due despite the disinformation, despite lies that were being spread about the election, despite bomb threats that were placed in New Jersey, despite foreign adversaries likely trying to create chaos. | ||
| The elections went incredibly smoothly, and that's really thanks to the hundreds of thousands of election workers from secretaries of state down to volunteer poll workers, Republicans and Democrats, who worked so hard and, by the way, are working right now on a weekend, still counting ballots, still confirming and auditing ballots to make sure that the counts are all set. | ||
| We have callers waiting to talk with you. | ||
| We'll start with Carl, who's calling from Arlington, Vermont, on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Carl. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| So my question is, I know how Trump has been trying to pass laws that are prohibiting people from easily voting. | ||
| What could we be doing differently, specifically Democrats and Republicans alike, differently to prevent the extremists from changing laws to prohibit blacks or whites or anybody from voting? | ||
| What could we be doing differently to prevent the extremists from changing laws? | ||
| Yeah, thanks, Carl. | ||
| So I think we should identify two different things that are going on here. | ||
| One is, is vote suppression widespread? | ||
| Are there attempts to suppress the vote and is it working? | ||
| I think while there are some attempts to suppress votes, particularly by state legislatures in some cases, they're pretty rare and largely they aren't working. | ||
| We're seeing very high turnout in recent elections, even just this past week for an odd-year election, just off-the-charts turnout. | ||
| The New York City mayor's race had over 2 million people voting when in 2021 it was only about 1.2 million. | ||
| So remarkable turnout. | ||
| Voters are showing that they have found voting easy and convenient and they want to take part. | ||
| But we have seen efforts to kind of create a narrative that fraud is much more widespread in the voting process than it is and use that to justify some restrictions. | ||
| Perhaps most notably, this administration has been pushing a narrative around non-citizens voting in American elections. | ||
| And we know that election fraud exists, but it's extremely rare. | ||
| It's not zero, but it's very close to zero. | ||
| The number of fraudulent votes cast even in a major presidential election might be in the dozens, and they are caught and they are prosecuted and those people get convicted. | ||
| It is a really easy way to go to jail all for the big payoff of casting one additional ballot in an election with 160 million ballots being cast. | ||
| The states do a remarkably good job of keeping their voter lists very, very accurate. | ||
| They are checking this right now. | ||
| Even states that are largely aligned with the president are finding very small numbers of non-citizens on the voter lists, like double digits. | ||
| And those are often mistakes. | ||
| They're not intentional acts of voter registration. | ||
| There is an occasional instance where a non-citizen has gotten onto the lists and has cast a ballot. | ||
| It's extremely rare. | ||
| It gets caught, and the penalties are very severe. | ||
| I mean, if someone is here as a non-citizen, probably for a variety of reasons, economic, family, et cetera, to cast a ballot in an election in the United States will come with penalties that include jail time and deportation. | ||
| And it's just very, what we've seen and we've had proven, and it's just extremely rare. | ||
| Most wouldn't take that risk if they are here without adequate documentation, and especially the ones who are working their way through the citizenship process or here legally. | ||
| The risks are just too great. | ||
| The penalties are very, very severe. | ||
| So voter fraud is extremely rare, and we should be careful because if we implement any procedures to try to minimize it even further, which are fine. | ||
| We should try to get it down to zero if at all possible. | ||
| We need to also make sure that those don't accidentally capture eligible voters and restrict them from voting. | ||
| And what we see from Republican and Democratic election officials all across the country, they do this really diligently. | ||
| They do a very, very good job, regardless of party all throughout the states. | ||
| It was in Texas that on Tuesday, this headline is from Fox News. | ||
| It says, Texas passes constitutional amendment explicitly prohibiting non-citizen voting. | ||
| You were just talking about this. | ||
| Why is this even needed if citizens can't, non-citizens can't vote? | ||
| It's probably not needed, to be perfectly honest. | ||
| Non-citizen voting in Texas is against the law. | ||
| Non-citizen voting in any federal elections is against federal law. | ||
| There are a very small number of places in the country where non-citizens are allowed to vote in only local elections, for instance, school boards, because there might be people here who are not citizens but are sending their kids to the schools. | ||
| And those jurisdictions have decided it might be appropriate to let them vote. | ||
| But those people are kept on a separate list. | ||
| Those people are not allowed to vote in federal elections. | ||
| And it's extremely rare. | ||
| Most states, Texas already had said non-citizens are not allowed to vote in elections. | ||
| So it's no harm, no foul if they want to put that in the constitutional amendment. | ||
| And certainly if it reflects the will of Texas voters, I think that's totally fine. | ||
| Let's hear from John, who's calling from Florence, Massachusetts, on the line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm going to get to the topic soon, but I want to say to the person from Oklahoma, Obama Lydon said we could keep our health care and our doctors. | ||
| And Biden Lydon said the border was closed and inflation wasn't happening. | ||
| But getting on to this with the elections, the Democrats said that Trump didn't win in 2016. | ||
| It was all Russia. | ||
| And they lied about that. | ||
| They lied. | ||
| Whenever they lose, they complain about the election. | ||
| And in 2024, 2020, they're all talking about that, or 2024, that Elon Musk knew all about the computers and that they all fixed it. | ||
| So there's a lot of election deniers that nobody calls out. | ||
| And they say now there's voter suppression whenever it's black people or minorities they're trying to keep from voting. | ||
| Poor people could get kept from voting. | ||
| That's where it happens, not just minorities or anybody else. | ||
| And it happens every time. | ||
| I hear that the elections are all fair. | ||
| You guys say that. | ||
| So make sure that everybody knows that 2016 was fair and 2024 was fair so that they can stop calling in all the Democrats and denying elections. | ||
| Thanks a lot. | ||
| Yeah, thanks, John. | ||
| I share the view that anytime anyone casts doubt about an election that they legitimately lost, they should be called out, whether it's the President of the United States or anyone else. | ||
| And it is absolutely true that there has been election denialism on both sides of the aisle. | ||
| There was an article I was interviewed for in The Atlantic recently about how there are still some claiming that Kamala Harris lost or won in 2024. | ||
| In 2016, I was one of the first to say Donald Trump won legitimately because he had. | ||
| But we should note that Hillary Clinton called him and conceded within 24 hours of that election. | ||
| And very few in the Democratic Party embraced the lies that were spread about 2016. | ||
| The investigations about interference in 2016 did find significant Russian interference. | ||
| They did not say that would have changed the outcome. | ||
| I think those are largely true. | ||
| In 2020, we saw widespread election denialism, largely coming from Republicans. | ||
| But Joe Biden won that election legitimately. | ||
| It was very clear. | ||
| It was probably the most scrutinized election in American history. | ||
| It's been litigated more times than any election ever, and the work of election officials has held up. | ||
| And in 2024, Donald Trump clearly won legitimately. | ||
| The results of those elections have been held up. | ||
| Vice President Harris called and conceded immediately. | ||
| That concession, I think, is really something to look for. | ||
| Whether losing candidates call and concede and accept the results and the will of the people over time is something we really need to watch for and expect and restore as norms. | ||
| I know just this week when Zorhan Mamdani won the election for New York City mayor, the Republican candidate Curtis Sleewa called almost immediately and wished him luck and conceded the election. | ||
| That is something that we shouldn't be surprised about anymore. | ||
| That is something that is a norm. | ||
| That is something we should expect from candidates regardless. | ||
| And many candidates are doing that. | ||
| And whenever candidates of either party refuse to concede, whether candidates of either party, not random people on social media, but leaders of the party, candidates and campaigns, refuse to concede, we should call them out. | ||
| And especially we should call them out if they are members of our own party. | ||
| Michael is calling from Pennsylvania on the line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Michael. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Thank you for C-SPAN. | ||
| And I wanted to ask your guest: I have some real problems with some of the things that he's saying, particularly what really bothers me is about these blue states, as I'm in Pennsylvania and some of the ways they conduct elections. | ||
| I don't think it's on the up and up. | ||
| There's a problem. | ||
| Whenever Democrats win and they redistrict, there's not a peep from the media. | ||
| But when Republicans win and they want to redistrict, it's all of a sudden the world's coming to an end. | ||
| And that's one issue. | ||
| The other issue is voter fraud. | ||
| I really think there's a lot more voter fraud than this gentleman wishes to acknowledge. | ||
| I heard the other caller talk about that. | ||
| And here in Pennsylvania, we have an independent group that went out and audited all these places, canvassed all these areas, homes that were completely empty, that were, you know, that had God knows how many votes coming out of them. | ||
| There's a lot of voter fraud. | ||
| We have a governor here in Pennsylvania who was allowed to register voters, register illegals for voting, simply because of a driver's license. | ||
| They just had a driver's license. | ||
| And so the fact is that it's gotten easier and easier to defraud the voting system. | ||
| And I can understand the frustration from that caller from California who said there's no chance for a vote for her. | ||
| It's practically a shut-down state. | ||
| You have the state. | ||
| We had here in Pennsylvania, for example, a state Supreme Court that's five to two Democrats, and they wouldn't even allow questions on the mail-in voting when that was up to the Constitution. | ||
| It should have been up to the Constitution. | ||
| So they ruled strictly politically, and they were not recalled because on the ballot there was no name for, they made it as confusing as possible to make sure that nobody knew why these people were being questioned. | ||
| There were no articles in the paper saying the real reason for recall or not reconfirming these people is because they did not adhere to our own state's constitution in the voting. | ||
| Michael, we're going to give David a chance to respond. | ||
| He's been jotting down notes on your questions. | ||
| I mean, first, let's talk about the voter fraud issue. | ||
| And I think there are, I understand why people have concerns. | ||
| But the fact is, I was a federal lawyer investigating violations of federal voting laws for many years. | ||
| I've been in court over this. | ||
| I've observed elections in about 4,000 precincts in my career. | ||
| I can tell you, we know how much voter fraud there is. | ||
| And that number is very low. | ||
| Again, it's not zero, but it's not much more than zero. | ||
| And even organizations that have been really raising the alarms about alleged voter fraud, like the Heritage Foundation, since 1980 have only found about 1,000 cases out of billions of votes cast during that period of time. | ||
| It's just extremely rare, and the checks and balances really are in place to ensure it doesn't happen. | ||
| I think what we see a lot in the United States is people both across the political spectrum, because we are so divided as a nation, have started to silo themselves in their consumption of media. | ||
| And, you know, when we talk about the complaints about redistricting, for instance, most of the media I consume have really called out both Republicans and Democrats for this. | ||
| I mean, if you look at, for instance, the Texas redistricting, where 43% of Texans voted for Vice President Harris in 2024, but only maybe as few as eight of the 38 Texas House seats are going to be drawn for Democrats. | ||
| In California, the new plan that was just approved by voters, about 39 to 40 percent of Californians voted for President Trump, and yet probably only about four or five of those districts are going to be Republican. | ||
| So we're seeing this on both sides of the aisle. | ||
| And certainly the media I consume talks about it in both ways because the voters are losing there. | ||
| But facts are facts. | ||
| We know how much fraud exists. | ||
| It's not that much. | ||
| And the best way, if you have any doubts about the voting process, is not to consume social media, not to listen to election losers who've complained about elections, regardless of what side of the aisle you're on. | ||
| The best way to actually learn about the checks and balances in place in our election process, volunteer to be a poll worker in your community. | ||
| Call up your local election office, your county election office, or go online. | ||
| They would love to have you. | ||
| They don't care what your party is. | ||
| They would love to have you serve. | ||
| My own teenage son does it. | ||
| It is a wonderful way to learn about all the checks and balances. | ||
| It is a wonderful way to serve your community and meet members of your community and give them all a voice regardless of what their politics are. | ||
| It's incredibly rewarding. | ||
| It's very rare for people who've served as poll workers to come away with significant doubts about the process because they see how everything that is done is observed. | ||
| It's redundant. | ||
| There are checks and balances. | ||
| I just saw a post on social media alleging widespread fraud by election workers saying, take a look at these election workers. | ||
| They're doing all this stuff without any observation. | ||
| They were literally videoing it and sharing it on X. | ||
| I mean, that is the kind of cognitive dissonance we often see when people start talking about voter fraud, especially about voter fraud, that they're more concerned about when their candidates lose than when their candidates win. | ||
| Donald Trump won Pennsylvania legitimately in 2024 by a significant margin. | ||
| Something you just mentioned, our election watchers or observers, people who go in and watch those poll workers, if you're not volunteering, there are people there who are watching what's happening. | ||
| Talk more about their role and how somebody could become involved with that if they weren't actually working the poll. | ||
| So every jurisdiction allows poll watchers in some ways. | ||
| The campaigns and the candidates and the political parties always have poll watchers. | ||
| Sometimes they're in a selection of polling places. | ||
| Oftentimes they're in the vote counting centers, particularly in mail ballot states. | ||
| So for instance, in California, there are probably hundreds of poll watchers in, for instance, Los Angeles County right now watching the process of verifying the mail ballots, the signatures, opening the mail ballots, putting the ballots into the tabulators, confirming the results and the counts that are going through. | ||
| DOJ, Department of Justice monitors, are in California or were in California this week doing the same. | ||
| I mean, and that's good. | ||
| Transparency is good. | ||
| I don't know if people remember, but in 2020, there was a near riot outside a Detroit, Michigan counting center where the safety of the people who were working inside was really at risk. | ||
| People were attempting to break windows and break in and very importantly break the chain of custody of those ballots, which would have been very dangerous, claiming that there were no observers. | ||
| There were literally 200 observers inside on the other side of those doors watching the entire process, Democrats and Republicans, representatives, campaigns. | ||
| That's very, very common. | ||
| It should be encouraged. | ||
| We should do that as much as possible. | ||
| Transparency is a very, very good thing. | ||
| But again, don't believe everything you see on the internet. | ||
| There's an ecosystem of grifters out there that since 2020 and even before have attempted to divide us as a nation, to get us to distrust our fellow American citizens, to get us to distrust processes that are trustworthy, and all for the purposes of further dividing us and importantly raising money. | ||
| There are people who've gotten rich off of this. | ||
| It's the reason that when, for instance, Dominion Voting Systems sued Rudy Giuliani, Kerry Lake, or I'm sorry, Rudy Giuliani, Fox News, Fox News settled that for nearly $800 million rather than put on a shred of evidence that would suggest that what they reported was accurate about voter fraud. | ||
| Rudy Giuliani conceded liability in his defamation case here in D.C. | ||
| He didn't put on any evidence. | ||
| He decided just to walk away and say, I admit it, I lied. | ||
| Now we get to the damages phase. | ||
| Kerry Lake, when sued, conceded liability, went right to the damages phase. | ||
| Mike Lindell didn't put on any evidence that any of the claims he made was accurate. | ||
| Every time any of the claims that are easily made on social media have to stand the test of going to court and withstanding scrutiny, the people making those claims run away. | ||
| And that should tell you so much about the validity of those claims. | ||
| Peter is calling from Florida on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Peter. | ||
| Peter, are you there? | ||
| Any of the claims that are easily made on social media? | ||
| Peter walked away from your phone. | ||
| Peter, go ahead and give us the call back. | ||
| Erin is calling from Scottsboro, Alabama, on the line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Scott. | ||
| Good morning, Aaron. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Thanks for having me on. | ||
| First off, I want to say that you guys have a fine program here, and I appreciate what you guys do. | ||
| And that, you know, I just have a couple of things to say. | ||
| I used to be very Republican. | ||
| I'm not anymore. | ||
| And I voted for Donald Trump the first time. | ||
| I certainly did not the second time. | ||
| And I just want to say that, you know, regarding their election fraud and whatever, you know, on either side when people cry election fraud is usually, to me, an impulsive childish response to losing. | ||
| And you can see that very clearly in Mom Dami's victory in New York. | ||
| And I'm a former New Yorker, by the way, and I'm very much considering going back. | ||
| Americans need to come together, our list of race and religion and ideology and, you know, party affiliation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And they need to be Americans again, treat each other like Americans again. | |
| And I do not believe in God, but may he have mercy on Donald Trump's soul. | ||
| Yeah, thanks for that message, Aaron. | ||
| I think the point he makes especially about not just seeing sore loserism on both sides sometimes, right? | ||
| That we see this from losing candidates occasionally. | ||
| We have to say it's still the exception rather than the rule, thankfully. | ||
| But we do see candidates or supporters of candidates sometimes refuse to accept the facts of defeat. | ||
| And I think the election denialism we saw, not from the candidate herself, not from any leaders in the Democratic Party, but from some Democrats about the 2024 election is an example of that. | ||
| Certainly we've seen it on the Republican side as well. | ||
| Sometimes we see it as we see it now where the president spreads false claims about elections in advance of an election, just in case his candidates lose, seeking to divide us, seeking to get us to distrust our systems. | ||
| And we should note that this is a tactic of our foreign adversaries that we know under Republican and Democratic administrations, the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians have sought to divide us. | ||
| They have sought to spread messages that will cause us to hate our fellow Americans, to distrust our fellow Americans. | ||
| We know from investigations, bipartisan investigations, that the Russians, for instance, in 2020 were promoting Black Lives Matters and all Lives Matter rallies at the same locations in places like Houston, hoping there would be violence, hoping there would be division and chaos. | ||
| And when Americans spread false claims about our elections not being trustworthy, whether they know it or not, they're doing the work of our adversaries, whether it's the Chinese Communist Party or the Russians who have dreamed for ages of getting Americans to believe that democracy can't work for them, that they shouldn't trust their elections. | ||
| And now to see Americans doing it to ourselves must be incredibly gratifying for those who hate democracy and who hate the freedoms we enjoy here. | ||
| Brenda is calling from Georgia on the line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Brenda. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Trump is doing all he can do. | ||
| He has got guys down. | ||
| He has got grocers down and everything. | ||
| This shutdown needs to be opened back up where people can get their money and have a good life. | ||
| And God bless everybody. | ||
| Let's hear from Thomas in Dayton Beach. | ||
| I believe it is, I'm going to guess Florida. | ||
| I can't see it on my screen. | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| Thomas on the line for independence, where are you calling from? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, bye. | |
| Hi, Thomas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Yeah, I'm Tayton on the beach. | ||
| I've got a question for the guy you got up there. | ||
| You know, back after the 2024 election, Trump made a, he was giving a speech and he made a comment about Elon Musk helping him straighten out the electronic voting in the state of Pennsylvania. | ||
| Now, my question to you is this. | ||
| Somebody with unlimited funds like Elon Musk, is it possible for him to like the counters to change the counters? | ||
| Like in other words, if the Democrat vote, they want it to be a Republican vote. | ||
| Is that something that is possible? | ||
| I mean, you're talking about somebody that's, you know, the richest man in the world. | ||
| Is there a chance that it can be manipulated? | ||
| That's a great question, Thomas. | ||
| I'm really glad you asked it, because I think we sometimes hear from both the left and the right that there has been something in the machines that has been fixed to deliver victories to particular candidates. | ||
| And here's what everyone needs to understand. | ||
| We use machines to tabulate our ballots because our ballots are very long and very complex. | ||
| And if we did them all by hand, it would take months, if not years, in many cases. | ||
| And this has actually been tested over time. | ||
| Most states and counties have ballots that in a presidential election might have dozens and dozens of racists, in some cases even over 100. | ||
| So machines count them very accurately and very fast. | ||
| But there are strict rules around these machines. | ||
| These machines are certified. | ||
| These machines have to comply with state law. | ||
| There are a strict chain of custody requirements around these machines. | ||
| We know who touches these machines every moment. | ||
| And these machines, really importantly, are not connected to the internet. | ||
| They are individual. | ||
| And so it is theoretically possible for an individual to get at one machine or a small number of machines, but not a widespread number of machines. | ||
| And even that theoretical possibility, we haven't really seen it play out. | ||
| But the single most important aspect of election security is that we have paper ballots throughout this nation. | ||
| Paper, verifiable, auditable, recountable ballots in almost everywhere in the country. | ||
| 98% of all Americans vote on verifiable, auditable paper ballots. | ||
| The only state that doesn't right now is Louisiana, and they're moving towards it. | ||
| And there's a couple of counties in Texas. | ||
| Everywhere else, we have those paper ballots, which means that we can double check the machine counts with those paper ballots after the voter has gone. | ||
| And the states do that. | ||
| You might recall that in 2020, there was a claim about the Georgia elections being stolen. | ||
| And thanks to the leadership of Georgians, particularly in the Secretary of State office and the legislature, largely Republicans, they had moved to paper ballots for that election, which they didn't have in 2016. | ||
| And in 2020, they were able to bring out all 5 million plus presidential ballots and count them by hand and verify the count in about five days, which was really, really remarkable. | ||
| So we know that the machines counted that election accurately. | ||
| We know the results were accurate. | ||
| Pennsylvania, similarly, all paper ballots. | ||
| Every single state, Florida, your state, all paper ballots. | ||
| So you can be confident, thanks to the controls over the machines, the lack of connectivity to the internet, the paper ballots, and the audits that every state conducts, that we are getting the right results. | ||
| The initial results are just unofficial. | ||
| The reason that the official results aren't certified until usually weeks later is because election officials, for instance, right now in many states, are doing the hard work of confirming the counts, auditing the counts before certification. | ||
| The caller bringing up Elon Musk, it was on Tuesday on X. | ||
| He was posting claims about election interference, specifically not necessarily the vote count, but it was about the layout of the ballot for the New York mayor's race. | ||
| What can you tell us about that? | ||
| So the way the New York City mayor's race ballot has been laid out for decades is that the major parties get the prime real estate. | ||
| Democrat and Republican nominee are listed first. | ||
| Smaller parties are listed next. | ||
| And then independent candidates are listed last. | ||
| Sometimes smaller parties cross-endorse one of the major party candidates. | ||
| And in that case, that person is listed twice on the ballot, and all those ballots are counted. | ||
| But importantly, this is the way New York has done it for a long time. | ||
| We set the rules in advance of the election, and we play by those rules. | ||
| There are always going to be some people who don't like those rules. | ||
| If I have the best field goal kicker in the league and I lose the Super Bowl by one point, I'm not going to complain that field goals weren't worth five points. | ||
| I know what the rules are when I go into the game. | ||
| If someone had a problem with the New York City ballot, they could have brought that litigation beforehand. | ||
| Certainly, Andrew Cuomo knew when he was running in the Democratic primary that he wanted the prime real estate of that Democratic Party nomination. | ||
| And he didn't win it, so he had to run as an independent. | ||
| He knew those rules. | ||
| I suspect he didn't complain about the layout of the ballot because he knew exactly what was going to happen ahead of time. | ||
| It was not litigated before the election. | ||
| And it's unfortunate to see people spread disinformation about the election when everyone knew the rules, and especially someone like Mr. Musk, who has a very loud megaphone, who controls a social media platform. | ||
| I tried to address that disinformation in a tweet on Twitter, on X, and I probably got dozens of people engaging where he likely had millions and millions of people engaging. | ||
| You know, I think it would be much more responsible for individuals like Mr. Musk and others. | ||
| Look, if he wants to learn about American elections, there are a lot of people who would be happy to sit down with him, including myself. | ||
| But we should all agree that we set the rules in advance of the election. | ||
| And sometimes those rules are litigated, and sometimes people are going to win and lose. | ||
| But by the time that voting is over, we know what those rules are, and you can't complain about those rules after that. | ||
| Carmen is calling from Florida on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Carmen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| It's Carmen from Coconut Creek, Florida. | ||
| Thanks, David, for being on. | ||
| I actually had a lot of different issues, but I'm going to stick to the topic. | ||
| Mine is, first of all, I'm not going to bother you with answering any questions about voter fraud. | ||
| I think it's ludicrous that they're still going there, but all of the proof and fact-checking that was out there already. | ||
| My question is, how come you sit inside the building, and rightfully so, you need to protect these people working at the poll. | ||
| But I notice outside the building, people, you see, the lie already went through. | ||
| They're already trying to Kool-Aid. | ||
| And I pray for them. | ||
| You know, I have neighbors that are Republican, some are MAGA, and, you know, we disagree without being disagreeable, right? | ||
| But when I worked to poll the last big election, I live in a community with 8,000 residents. | ||
| And when I went up there, it was, you know, my first time working a poll, and I asked for a sign. | ||
| They told me to go to the front door. | ||
| I went to the front door. | ||
| Everybody started screaming at me. | ||
| You're not supposed to be here. | ||
| We have to stand like 30 feet outside the front of the poll thing. | ||
| And I was just asking for the sign. | ||
| So finally, I reached to my gentleman. | ||
| I got the sign. | ||
| And I'm standing out there. | ||
| And then someone came up to me and said, you need to move. | ||
| You know, I was standing in a street. | ||
| I'm like, okay. | ||
| So I moved further down the street. | ||
| I went to the middle street. | ||
| have this barrier with grass in the middle. | ||
| So I went there and I held my sign up. | ||
| And what I noticed, older women coming up to me and whispering to me, you know, they roll the window down, thank you for your service, meaning thank you for your service. | ||
| And I was like, you're welcome. | ||
| And then I had a gentleman come up to me, big dude, and he's staring me down. | ||
| And I'm like, okay, I think this guy thinks he's intimidating, but he's not. | ||
| So my question is, how can we reach out to more men to come and work at the polls? | ||
| I think the fear mongrels working on their end, I feel like they got people afraid to actually come out and vote, which I think is crazy. | ||
| No one's going to hurt you. | ||
| But, you know, the fear is still there is my point. | ||
| And then the other thing I mentioned to the lady getting on the phone was, how can we move the no-kings rally to you have a right to vote rally next year? | ||
| Because go ahead and give you a story. | ||
| So I think there's a point here, and I really thank you for that, Carmen, about the safety of voting in the United States. | ||
| There are forces that want people to think that voting is hard, that voting is dangerous, that people are going to be verbally or physically accosted if they show up. | ||
| Even there was some concern that the announcement of Department of Justice monitors around the 2025 election was designed to kind of make people fear that they were going to be profiled by law enforcement when they go to vote. | ||
| But we are just not seeing that. | ||
| I have to tell you that voting is incredibly safe, that despite the divisions, despite the anger that Carmen mentioned, when people vote, they almost unanimously have a really enjoyable experience. | ||
| And part of that also is the fact that voters now get to choose their own adventure in ways they haven't always in the past. | ||
| As I mentioned, 47 states offer early in-person voting. | ||
| That's how I choose to vote. | ||
| The only states that don't currently are Alabama, Mississippi, and New Hampshire. | ||
| If you don't live in one of those three states, there are times when you can go early, it might be called something different. | ||
| In Pennsylvania, it's called absentee in person. | ||
| But you go to a voting site or an election office. | ||
| You can get a ballot there, fill it out and turn it in before Election Day. | ||
| You can choose when you go, when it's convenient, usually even where you go, usually anywhere within a county. | ||
| Obviously, mail voting in 36 states, you can get it without an excuse. | ||
| That's very convenient for many. | ||
| Or if you prefer to vote on Election Day, that's been incredibly safe also. | ||
| Even with the bomb threats that happened in New Jersey just this past week, there was nothing to them. | ||
| They reopened those sites very quickly. | ||
| They kept those sites open late so people could still vote in safety. | ||
| In 2024, we also saw bomb threats. | ||
| We know that those bomb threats originated from Russian sources. | ||
| So back to my point about foreign adversaries, we're seeing foreign adversaries actively seek to create chaos. | ||
| And the best way to combat that chaos is to stand up as Americans regardless of who you're going to vote for and make your voice be heard by voting early, by mail, or in person on Election Day, whichever you prefer. | ||
| Lastly, I think Carmen raised a good point about kind of the deep anger and deep feelings people have about elections in this country. | ||
| And I mentioned the ecosystem of grifters before. | ||
| They are preying upon people who are sincerely disappointed in election outcomes. | ||
| I mean, every American understands what it's like to have really believed in a candidate or an issue and lost. | ||
| That should be foreign to nobody. | ||
| And that is a, no one is saying you shouldn't be disappointed. | ||
| Absolutely, people should be disappointed after a hardly fought campaign that they really believed in. | ||
| But we are seeing grifters exploit that disappointment to get rich off of these people. | ||
| And so like Carmen, I have a lot of empathy for people across the political spectrum who've been fed a constant diet of lies about elections, telling them, oh no, your candidate didn't lose. | ||
| Your campaign and your part, that campaigning party doesn't need to do anything to change and persuade more American voters next time. | ||
| You were robbed. | ||
| That election was stolen. | ||
| And it was stolen by millions of your fellow Americans of both parties who have committed a conspiracy that no one is talking about. | ||
| So send me money to help me fight that. | ||
| That's the message going out. | ||
| And we need to continue to push back on that because there are so many people of goodwill, Republicans and Democrats across the political spectrum, that know in a democracy, sometimes your candidate loses. | ||
| We are a closely divided nation. | ||
| No one should be surprised when either party wins an election right now. | ||
| And yet so many still fall for that grift because they're just being targeted with it so deeply. | ||
| Rod is calling from Enterprise, Kansas, on the line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Rod. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thanks for taking my call. | |
| I'd like to have your guest explain how 10 million votes, roughly 10 million votes, magically showed up in 2020 for a highly unpopular candidate throughout his whole career. | ||
| And then in 2024, they disappeared. | ||
| I'll take my answer off mine. | ||
| Okay, thanks, Rod. | ||
| So this is, again, one of those things that is going on on social media quite a bit. | ||
| If that had happened, believe me, it would have been litigated in court and it would have been discovered very, very easily. | ||
| But here's the reality. | ||
| The ballots that came in in 2020 were all cast by Election Day. | ||
| Now, some of them were, by the way, every state was still counting ballots long after Election Day in 2020, in 2022, in 2024. | ||
| States are still counting ballots today in 2025 for Tuesday's election. | ||
| The media often has enough ballots that have been counted, and the margins are large enough that they can call the races before then. | ||
| The 2020 election was particularly close. | ||
| And so the media didn't have enough ballots in Pennsylvania and Arizona and Georgia to call it on election night. | ||
| But those ballots didn't just appear. | ||
| They were logged in through a chain of custody with bipartisan teams, and they were in the office. | ||
| They were just waiting to be processed and counted and reported. | ||
| That takes some time. | ||
| When an election has a wider margin, we saw this on Tuesday. | ||
| The margins were fairly wide in New Jersey and in Virginia, for instance, and certainly in California, where they called the election at 8.01 p.m. a minute after the election had the polls had closed, that the media was able to call it. | ||
| Those are just unofficial calls. | ||
| That's just the media calling that. | ||
| The ballots in 2020 did not just appear. | ||
| Turnout in 2020 was the highest ever. | ||
| That happens when people are largely unhappy. | ||
| In 2024, those ballots didn't disappear. | ||
| We had the second highest turnout in American history in 2024. | ||
| Only about 3 million fewer votes overall nationwide in 2024 than in 2020. | ||
| But it was still the second highest turnout in American history in any election. | ||
| So when you look at the actual numbers and you understand how the process works, these things are all very explainable. | ||
| But again, there are grifters out there who are trying to say that votes just magically appeared or disappeared. | ||
| They're not just on one side of the aisle. | ||
| We see them on both sides of the aisle. | ||
| They're trying to raise money. | ||
| Please don't give anyone who's telling you your candidate didn't lose a certified election that has been fully litigated. | ||
| Don't give those people any money. | ||
| We have one more call for you. | ||
| It's Josie who's calling from Indiana, Pennsylvania, on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Josie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Your guest has made some wonderful points. | ||
| I am an election worker here in my county. | ||
| It's a rural county in western Pennsylvania. | ||
| I have been an election worker for several years. | ||
| We take an oath before the doors even open for the voters to come in at 7 a.m. | ||
| We take an oath to uphold the integrity of the elections. | ||
| We're your neighbors. | ||
| I know everyone, almost everyone who walks through the doors to vote. | ||
| It would be very, very difficult for anyone to try to rig an election in our district. | ||
| I'm very proud of the work that not only myself, I do, but so many of members of the community do to uphold the integrity of the election is very, very important to us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
A gentleman was on from Pennsylvania who said there was nothing about the judges race and et cetera. | |
| Well, it was a retention race. | ||
| If you had done your homework, there was a great deal of advertising plus media coverage of that race. | ||
| And if you looked at our election returns concerning that retention of judges, 63% of the people of this whole state of Pennsylvania voted to retain those judges. | ||
| So what I want to say is we take very seriously our work. | ||
| I am so proud of the people within my community who come to vote and who trust the work that we do. | ||
| Yeah, I'm so grateful for that call, Josie. | ||
| And first of all, thank you for your service and the service of all the other members in your community and throughout Indiana who volunteer their time to be poll workers. | ||
| As Josie knows, as all of you know who volunteer, it's not easy. | ||
| I don't want to suggest it is. | ||
| It's a long day and you have to go through training. | ||
| But your reward is to work with other members of your community at those polling places, often and sometimes by law, people who have different political views than you and give voice to all of the voters that come into those polling sites, many of whom likely have different political views than some of the workers. | ||
| And yet that's what we see from millions of Americans every single election. | ||
| It is frankly inspiring. | ||
| And to see foreign adversaries and others try to breed distrust about that public service is disturbing. | ||
| And unfortunately, what we've seen over the past five or six years is that election officials and even poll workers have been threatened, abused, harassed for their work, all thanks to lies about elections spread by election losers. | ||
| My organization founded something called the Election Official Legal Defense Network, which where we've recruited over 10,000 lawyers nationwide who are willing to serve pro bono at no cost to advise and assist any election official from a Secretary of State down to a poll worker who needs advice and assistance related to their official duties in elections. | ||
| And we've unfortunately had to, we've unfortunately been able to serve over 100 election officials in just the last few years. | ||
| But I'm very proud that we've been able to do that. | ||
| If you're an election official and you're watching this and you ever need assistance, go to eoldn.org, Election Official Legal Defense Network, and we'll get you set up with a free attorney to help you. | ||
| But most importantly, thank you all for your service. | ||
| And anyone who's listening to this and hasn't done it before, whether you have doubts about the election process or not, go onto your local election website, your county election website, find out how to volunteer to be a poll worker and serve in the next election. | ||
| The next big one will probably be the federal primary of 2026. | ||
| David Becker is founder and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research. | ||
| You can find the organization online at electioninnovation.org. | ||
| David, as always, thank you for being with us. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Later this morning on Washington Journal, we'll talk with semaphore political reporter Shelby Talcott about White House News of the Week, including the president's reaction to Tuesday's off-year elections, the government shutdown, and the Supreme Court case challenging his global tariffs. | ||
| But next, after the break, it's open forum. | ||
| You can start calling in now. | ||
| Here are the lines: Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Past president. | |
| Why? | ||
| Why are you doing this? | ||
| This is outrageous. | ||
| This is a kangaroo. | ||
| Fridays, C-SPAN presents a rare moment of unity. | ||
| Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins. | ||
| Politico Playbook chief correspondent and White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns is host of Ceasefire, bringing two leaders from opposite sides of the aisle into a dialogue. | ||
| Ceasefire on the network that doesn't take sides. | ||
| Fridays at 7 and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold new original series, This Sunday with our guest, The Chronicler of Adventures, award-winning best-selling author David Graham, whose books include The Lost City of Z, Killers of the Flower Moon, and The Wager. | ||
| He joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein. | ||
| So what about this fact, about this occurrence, made you think this could be something worth your time? | ||
| And I started to realize that this odd little old manuscript contained, you know, the seeds of one of the most extraordinary stories of survival and mayhem I had ever come across. | ||
|
unidentified
|
watch America's Book Club with David Graham this Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | |
| Sunday night on C-SPAN's Q&A, White House Historical Association President Stuart McLaurin, author of The People's House Miscellany, on the history of the White House and White House-related trivia. | ||
| He'll also talk about the changes that presidents and first ladies have made to the White House's interior and exterior, going back to President Thomas Jefferson. | ||
| The president never and his family never had a place to go outside and enjoy like we have a deck or a patio. | ||
| And so Truman broke up that colonnade of the South Portico and right in the middle, put a balcony off the residence level of the White House so the family could go out there and enjoy fresh air. | ||
| And very controversial. | ||
| People thought it ruined the look of the White House. | ||
| Congress was not going to fund it. | ||
| Truman said, I'll find the money and do it anyway. | ||
| And he built it. | ||
| And in this book, there are quotes by a number of presidents who said, thank you, Harry Truman. | ||
|
unidentified
|
White House Historical Association President Stuart McLaurin. | |
| Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's QA. | ||
| You can listen to QA and all our podcasts wherever you get your podcast or on our free C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back for the next 20 minutes or so. | ||
| We are in open form. | ||
| We'll start with Anwar, who's calling from Washington, D.C. Line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Anwar. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I'm actually on the line for independents, but good morning. | |
| I had a can you hear me? | ||
| Yes, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| I had questions for your last guest. | ||
| I wanted to let him know that In the last election that 2024, Donald Trump actually did not win based on the information from the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission, which is valid. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The NAACP and the Civil Rights Commission, I'll just give you a few figures. | |
| 4 million voters were wrongly purged from the voter rolls throughout the nation by August 2024. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Self-proclaimed vigilante voter fraud hunters in Georgia removed 318,000 voters, primarily black voters, out of the state of Georgia. | |
| No less than 2 million mail-in ballots were disqualified nationwide. | ||
| 585,000 ballots cast in precinct were disqualified. | ||
| 1,200,000 ballots were rejected. | ||
| 3.24 million new registrations were rejected or not entered on the rolls in time to vote nationwide. | ||
| In the state of Washington, found that black voters were 400% more likely than a white voter to have their mail-in ballot rejected. | ||
| Rejection in black person votes, according to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission study on Florida Rand, 14.13% or one in seven ballots cast of black person vote was rejected. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you understand? | |
| 31 polls. | ||
| Okay, Amar, we're going to leave it there. | ||
| It's a lot of statistics. | ||
| We'll go on to Steve in Big Fork, Montana, Line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, good morning. | |
| Thank you, avid C-SPAN viewers, since 1981. | ||
| Can you believe it? | ||
| Anyway, I really appreciated you having Mr. Becker on. | ||
| In Montana, our legislature, which is now completely GOP-controlled, decided they had to add additional election security to our mail-in ballots. | ||
| That requirement is to add your birth year on your ballot in addition to your signature. | ||
| And I just thought that was just a little over the top. | ||
| And I keep wondering what else are they going to add? | ||
| Do they want the last four digits of your Social Security number next? | ||
| Do they want your driver's license number? | ||
| I mean, how far is this going to go in terms of their trying to proclaim election problems in Montana? | ||
| Heritage Foundation research states that there are only two cases of voter fraud in Montana between 1992 and 2024. | ||
| So it's not like we have a lot going on there. | ||
| And one last comment. | ||
| I'm still extremely disappointed that the current occupant of the White House has not conceded the election of 2020. | ||
| I think he's done a lot more damage to election security since 2015 when he announced if he did not win in 2016, it would be due to fraud and election rigging. | ||
| So he's been articulating that line for a long, Long time. | ||
| And thank you, CFAN. | ||
| If you don't mind, a special shout out to Molly. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Bye. | ||
| That was Steve in Montana. | ||
| Let's hear from Dan in Oregon Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Dan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Yes, go ahead, Dan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, great. | |
| First of all, I just want to say good morning, America, to all of the folks on both sides of the political coin, including independents. | ||
| And I'd like to say that I moved to the state I live in without knowing its political leaning because I had a very ill and pretty far-gone Alzheimer's wife, and I wanted family to have a chance to have a little time with her before she went completely into the clouds. | ||
| So I've become somewhat educated about the political leanings of my state and whatnot. | ||
| And I'd like to just read this little two-paragraph thing that I've found out about things that were done in the history of our country to improve Americans' lifestyle. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So here we go. | |
| Liberals got women the right to vote, and liberals got African Americans the right to vote. | ||
| Liberals also created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. | ||
| Liberals also ended segregation. | ||
| Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. | ||
| Liberals created Medicare. | ||
| Liberals created the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. | ||
| What did conservatives do? | ||
| They opposed every one of those programs, everyone. | ||
| So if you try to hurl the word liberal at my feet as if it were dirty and something to run away from, something that I should be ashamed of, it won't work because I pick up that label and wear it as a badge of honor. | ||
| Now, in my personal life, I am a musician who plays for seniors in assisted livings situations to put a smile on their faces. | ||
| And that's my thrill. | ||
| I just want to help people, and I have always been that way. | ||
| So, America, if you're listening, why don't you think about helping somebody else than yourself? | ||
| That was Dan in Oregon. | ||
| This is a story out of Oregon from NBC News. | ||
| The headline, Judge Permanently Bars Trump from Deploying National Guard troops to Portland in response to immigration protest. | ||
| The article says that a federal judge in Oregon on Friday issued a permanent injunction barring the Trump administration from deploying the National Guard on the streets of Portland in response to protests against the president's immigration policies. | ||
| It says, quote, this court arrives at the necessary conclusion that there was neither a rebellion or danger of rebellion, nor was the president unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States in Oregon when he ordered the federalization and deployment of the National Guard. | ||
| That is, according to U.S. District Judge Karen J. Immergut, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in his first term, wrote in her ruling, the Trump administration can appeal the ruling if it wants to. | ||
| It also says Oregon Governor Tina Kotek responded to the ruling Friday, calling Trump's move to federalize the Guard a quote gross abuse of power. | ||
| Back to your calls. | ||
| Let's hear from Keith, who's calling from Maine on the line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Keith. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, and God bless you, America. | |
| I'm calling about, you know, I really would like to talk to that guy you had on talking about election integrity. | ||
| Just in my state, and the 2024 election, you know, with our Secretary of State taking Trump off the ballot was quite abnormal. | ||
| But going back to the 2020 election, I was a witness to several abnormalities the weeks coming up to the election and the day after. | ||
| In the city of Bangor, Maine, they found several boxes of ballots that hadn't been voted, hadn't been counted the night before on election day and decided they were going to count them anyway, that saying to the Mainers that it was no big deal. | ||
| I personally was sent a mail-in ballot that I never requested, and that's never happened to me before, and I've never heard of it happening in the state of Maine before that day. | ||
| There was several things in my region. | ||
| There was a college in Orno that I was a witness to something conspirators going on leading up to the election. | ||
| And after the election, two of the students from the college were busted for voting twice. | ||
| And from what I witnessed, I'd be willing to bet big money that there was more than just them two. | ||
| That was Keith and Maine. | ||
| Cliff is calling from Florida on the line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Cliff. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I was in the courtroom recently, and this witness was found to be intentionally deceiving the courtroom. | ||
| And they call it perjury. | ||
| And so there were consequences. | ||
| He was penalized quite severely. | ||
| Now, my question is, why isn't there something similar outside the courtroom? | ||
| When you have these politicians who are intentionally deceiving the public, it's despicable, but there's no consequences. | ||
| I think there should be a panel of experts that when they determine someone is lying, that they're disqualified. | ||
| I mean, it's just so ridiculous to have to deal with this. | ||
| Thank you for listening. | ||
| The Senate will be gaveling in today at noon. | ||
| They, this week, have not yet passed a short-term spending resolution. | ||
| It was the 14th time on Tuesday that they failed to approve that measure. | ||
| But a note from our Capitol Hill producer, Craig Kaplan, saying that they did pass something this week. | ||
| This is from Senator Ted Cruz. | ||
| Senate unanimously passes Senator Cruz legislation increasing the pension for Medal of Honor recipients. | ||
| It will now become law. | ||
| From that office, it says that members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today spoke on the Senate floor in favor of the Monetary Enhancement for Distinguished Active Legends Medal Act, which he drafted after which the Senate unanimously passed the bill. | ||
| The act had previously been passed unanimously by the U.S. House of Representatives and will now go to the President for his signature. | ||
| This legislation will increase the monthly pension for living Medal of Honor recipients to $67,500 annually. | ||
| It goes on to note that the legislation that the Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration bestowed by the United States. | ||
| There are only 61 living Medal of Honor recipients. | ||
| Medal of Honor recipients are often not retired from the U.S. military and often receive no compensation for the cost of their public engagements. | ||
| Through these appearances, they share their stories of heroism that inspire Americans, strengthen national pride, and support military recruiting and retention. | ||
| It says increasing their monthly pension is essential to easing the financial burdens on their families, ensuring they can continue to represent the best of our national values. | ||
| C-SPAN frequently airs Medal of Honor ceremonies. | ||
| You can find those online at c-span.org. | ||
| Christina is calling from Middleborough, Massachusetts, on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Christina. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking the call and thank you for your program. | ||
| I'm calling to address Republicans, Trump voters, and the lady who called from New Mexico earlier. | ||
| She was calling regarding abortion or killing babies, as they say. | ||
| Well, I guess they have no account or they take no account of the babies that they are responsible for killing when Trump approved the dismantling of USAID, taking the food and medical treatment out of the mouths of starving and sick babies and children. | ||
| And now he's trying to do the same thing to our poor people here in the USA. | ||
| It's very sad, very sorry state. | ||
| That was Christina in Massachusetts. | ||
| Denise is calling from Talmadge, Ohio, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Denise. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Yes, I try to call in every 30 days to try to help people understand this illegal immigration that's going on in our country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I want to explain the TPS, a temporary protective status again, okay, that started in 1990. | |
| Joe Biden willy-nilly let like 30 countries or around 20 countries of people to come in under this temporary protected status and started in 2021. | ||
| And after five years, which that's coming up in 2026, they will qualify for the child tax credit, SNAP, Medicaid, disability, Social Security. | ||
| 22 states offer the TPS aliens these programs through state tax dollars, which comes from federal tax dollars, which starts from the American people. | ||
| Some of these countries are Haiti. | ||
| Some of these people have been living in Chile and Brazil for four or five years during Trump's administration. | ||
| They had children born in those countries. | ||
| And as soon as Joe Biden became president, they started making their way up to the United States so they could cross the border illegally in 2021. | ||
| There's 1,300,000 of them in this country right now. | ||
| They have a 25% higher rate of home ownership after five years allowed to come and go from this country. | ||
| It is not any kind of illegal, it's not any kind of legal status. | ||
| It's not a green card. | ||
| It's just something that the President Joe Biden gave to these people. | ||
| And it's done through Homeland Security that my orcas did all this. | ||
| In Joe Biden's first 100 days, he banned the deportation of anybody that was in removal procedures. | ||
| Even if they had committed a crime, they were supposed to close the case and let them walk out of the court. | ||
| The thing is, a lot of people don't understand that nobody in this country is against illegal deportation, but we just don't want people coming into this country willy-nilly. | ||
| That was Denise in Ohio. | ||
| Dan is calling from Pittsfield, Massachusetts on the line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Dan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thank you. | |
| I'm calling about the government shutdown, which apparently is because there is discrepancy between Democrats and Republicans. | ||
| The Democrats prefer that they allow subsidies for the Affordable Care Act. | ||
| If the Affordable Care Act were affordable, then you wouldn't need subsidies, and there's a tremendous amount of waste in there, yet no one is talking about trying to look at the waste. | ||
| Compare that program with other programs like in Europe. | ||
| For instance, they encourage a lot of testing that has no end. | ||
| Much of the testing that's all done is for perceived legal liability. | ||
| In our country, the drugs are much more expensive than they are in Europe, such as inhalers. | ||
| There are also drugs that are used for relatively rare conditions, yet physicians are told that they should order expensive tests such as MRIs on a wide range of people to look for a rare condition and then find that the treatment then costs $500,000 a year. | ||
| So I think there are many areas in the Affordable Care Act that could be corrected, and it would be nice if there was a compromise between the left and the right to temporarily fund the subsidies, while looking to see if there are ways that they could actually make the program affordable through pharmaceuticals and through elimination of unnecessary tests and also unnecessary work, | ||
| since they drove many providers out of business by making regulations such as the High Tech Act and others that just made provision of health care more expensive and more difficult. | ||
| That was Dan in Massachusetts. | ||
| Florence is calling from Brasher Falls in New York. | ||
| Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Florence. | ||
| Florence, are you there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I am. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Hi, Florence. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I wanted to say, by the way, I must let you know, I am 89 years old, and I work for Citicorp. | ||
| The thing is that we should look for ways, but not the way they did it, like throwing everybody off the job. | ||
| I just want to say that. | ||
| Now I want to get to my political thing. | ||
| I believe that we make a big mistake when we don't make rules and stay by them, such as if you can't do and vote for people or nominate a person for judgeship too close to an election, that should stand and not for one political party, such as they did for Obama's party. | ||
| The other thing, I have to try to get it all out. | ||
| I really believe you have to take money out of the elections. | ||
| There should be set amounts that as a citizen, we all pay, just like we do taxes. | ||
| And that way, they can never use their family member money or any outside person. | ||
| Give them a budget to work on and do the best they can with it. | ||
| If we leave money into this voting situation, there will never be full honesty. | ||
| That was Florence and New York. | ||
| Dawn is calling from Sandpoint, Idaho, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Don. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, and thank you for taking my call. | |
| And I'm calling in response to your first caller in this segment who was very concerned about black voters their votes not being counted. | ||
| And there is one very easy remedy, and that is voter ID, one-day voting. | ||
| Instead of voting from 8 in the morning to 8 at night, make it 24 hours, 12 a.m. to midnight the next night, and everyone would have a chance to vote like they did before they started mailing ballots. | ||
| All the problems with voting have started since mailing ballots started, and they are nothing but a problem, and it should be stopped. | ||
| That was Don in Idaho. | ||
| Gary is calling from Connorsville, Indiana, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Gary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, ma'am. | |
| And I'd like to say, before I make a couple quick points, I just want to say how much I appreciate your program. | ||
| And I learned a lot of good things from the guests and even the callers. | ||
| And so that's what makes it so great. | ||
| So long may it continue. | ||
| My first point is I appreciate what Mr. Becker stands for as far as voting rights and everything. | ||
| And there's just so much cheat, you know, so many procedures done as far as cheating to break the system. | ||
| And here's a good point I have. | ||
| If people, if the agenda is so well justified on one end or the other, then why does there have to be gerrymandering or any other kind of cheating going on to get for their side to win? | ||
| Let's think about that one. | ||
| And the other point I'd like to make is in regard to universal health care. | ||
| As a matter of fact, a caller a couple weeks ago inspired me to make this call. | ||
| And he pointed out other countries have that and they have no problem. | ||
| We're the richest country in the world and we can't afford to have universal health care. | ||
| Seriously, everybody, I think it's a tragedy. | ||
| You know, human lives are more important than making money. | ||
| Why can't you people understand that? | ||
| Or do you just not give a hoop? | ||
| That's all I got to say. | ||
| Have a good day, everybody. | ||
| That was Gary in Indiana. | ||
| Our last call in this open forum. | ||
| Next on Washington Journal, we'll talk with Semaphore White House correspondent Shelby Talcott about whether the president is going to intervene in the ongoing shutdown and get his reaction to Tuesday's off-year elections. | ||
| And as we go to break on this day 39 of the government shutdown, we want to give you a taste of how the continued stalemate played out on the Senate floor yesterday. | ||
| I will make sure there are enough Republicans over here to say no to your plan to hold us hostage and continue to terrorize this country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You've gone too far. | |
| If I were you, Senator Schumer, I would rethink. | ||
| Because I'm telling you, every day is not getting better for you. | ||
| Because every day is getting worse for the people of this country who interact with the government, who travel, who are working and not getting paid. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's getting worse for them. | |
| And you're demanding something of me and others we will not give into. | ||
| We will not be held hostage to continue Obamacare that's been a miserable failure. | ||
| We will not be held hostage to continue to give money to health care companies, insurance companies, to enrich him at the expense of the American people. | ||
| So I don't know when it ends and how it ends, but I know what the outcome will be with my vote. | ||
| We're going to break the cycle of rewarding health care insurance companies at the expense of the consumer. | ||
| We're going to stop this madness with my vote. | ||
| I hope we can find a way forward, but that way forward will not include what's going on today. | ||
| So I will be voting no to the idea that we will continue these subsidies, rewarding health care insurance companies insane amounts, driving up premium costs and getting bad outcomes to open up the government. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I reject that and I will vote no to that. | |
| And the demands you're making grow every day. | ||
| You're overplaying your hand and you're hurting people. | ||
| Stop it. | ||
| The American people understand that the Republican Party controls the White House, they control the Senate, they control the House of Representatives. | ||
| And understandably, for that reason, poll after poll shows that Americans hold the Republicans accountable for this shutdown. | ||
| But it's not just polls. | ||
| On Tuesday, there was an election in which Trumpism was overwhelmingly rejected from Maine to California and a lot of states and cities in between. | ||
| And one of the key reasons is that Americans want Democrats to make certain that they do not experience huge increases in their health care premiums or get thrown off the health care they have. | ||
| That is what they are saying. | ||
| We cannot afford a doubling or tripling in our health care costs. | ||
| Stand with us. | ||
| That's what that election was significantly about. | ||
| President Trump claims to be a dealmaker. | ||
| In fact, he wrote a book called The Art of the Deal. | ||
| Well, Mr. President, the ball is in your court right now. | ||
| Help negotiate a deal. | ||
| Show us what a great deal maker you are. | ||
| Help us negotiate a deal which protects the health care of tens of millions of Americans and let us end this shutdown today. | ||
| We can end it in the next few hours. | ||
| So, Mr. President, that is what this struggle is about. | ||
| That's what the shutdown is all about. | ||
| It's whether Republicans succeed in making a broken and dysfunctional health care system even worse by making health care unaffordable for working class and middle class Americans. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Washington Journal continues. | |
| Welcome back. | ||
| Joining us now to discuss the latest from the White House is Shelby Talcott, who covers the Trump administration for Semaphore. | ||
| Shelby, thank you so much for joining us. | ||
| I want to dive right in. | ||
| It's day 39 of the shutdown. | ||
| Congress seems no closer to a deal, despite them being in D.C. this weekend. | ||
| I wonder what you're hearing from your White House sources as to how they believe that their strategy could bring this potentially to a close. | ||
| Well, the White House has argued from day one that this is the Democratic shutdown, right? | ||
| And so that's still, even over a month into all of this, how they're viewing things. | ||
| And I think that's important because when you look at what the White House has been doing, they've really taken a step back of this shutdown compared to, say, the first administration and how they handled those shutdowns. | ||
| And that's because their argument is there's not much for them to do, right? | ||
| And so you're seeing growing frustration from the side of the White House. | ||
| You saw the president start pushing for Senate Republicans to use the filibuster. | ||
| You're seeing sort of more pressure as more things start shutting down and as Americans really start feeling the effects of the shutdown. | ||
| But at the same time, I don't think that their strategy is changing all that much since day one. | ||
| Yeah, to your point, the president has been pretty hands-off, but you are seeing a growing chorus of Democrats say that it is time for him to get involved and to try to broker a deal. | ||
| I asked one White House official about it, and they said the Democrats are wish casting, but I wonder if you're hearing from Republicans that it's time for the president to get involved. | ||
| Yeah, we're hearing from both sides of the aisle. | ||
| People want the president involved because there's understanding that President Trump, A, he's the president, but also B, he does have a unique ability to sort of get people in a room and say, figure this out. | ||
| And so there's an acknowledgement, even on the side of Republicans, that if the government shutdown were to end, Donald Trump needs to be the one spearheading it. | ||
| And so far, we really haven't seen that from the president. | ||
| We've seen him go overseas. | ||
| We've seen him, you know, have multiple meetings with world leaders just this week alone. | ||
| That's sort of been his focus much more than it has been trying to get Democrats, trying to get Republicans in a room and figure out a way to end this shutdown. | ||
| Shelby, I wonder if you've seen the results from Tuesday's off-year elections, obviously, where Democrats had major wins up and down the ballot and Republicans didn't really have any at all. | ||
| I wonder if you've seen that add any urgency to the shutdown strategy from the White House. | ||
| I think certainly White House officials are frustrated with how Tuesday's election results went, but I would say that they're not surprised. | ||
| When I talked to White House officials, they said that these were sort of the results they expected all along, right? | ||
| Everybody expected Zorn Manbani to win in New York City. | ||
| They argued that they didn't put forth good candidates in places like Virginia. | ||
| And so all of that combined with the fact that there is an acknowledgement from the White House that these Democratic candidates who won talked a lot about affordability, which is what won them those elections. | ||
| So there's frustration about Tuesday's election, but I wouldn't say that they're surprised. | ||
| And because of that, you're not, I would say, not seeing the urgency because of the elections. | ||
| I would say the urgency is more coming from some of these SNAP benefits expiring, for example, and them having to take people off TSA. | ||
| And sort of you're seeing the real world effects of this shutdown. | ||
| That's what's causing the pressure more so than them having a bad result earlier this week. | ||
| I want to invite our viewers to join in this conversation. | ||
| Democrats, that line for you is 202-748-800. | ||
| Republicans, that line for you is 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents, your line is 202-748-8002. | ||
| Shelby, back to you, because I want to stay on the election results. | ||
| Obviously, the president has been talking about it a lot since Tuesday night. | ||
| I want to play for you his assessment of Tuesday night's elections just that morning after Wednesday morning when he brought a group of senators to the White House for breakfast. | ||
| Take a listen. | ||
| Discussion after the press leaves about what last night represented and what we should do about it and also about the shutdown, how that relates to last night. | ||
| I think if you read the polls, the shutdown was a big factor, negative for the Republicans. | ||
| And that was a big factor. | ||
| And they say that I wasn't on the ballot was the biggest factor. | ||
| But I don't know about that, but I was honored that they said that. | ||
| It's time for Republicans to do what they have to do, and that's terminate the filibuster. | ||
| It's the only way you can do it. | ||
| And if you don't terminate the filibuster, you'll be in bad shape. | ||
| We won't pass any legislation. | ||
| There'll be no legislation passed for three and a quarter. | ||
| We have three and a quarter years, so that's a long time. | ||
| But when they can't do an extension, and John, I think they've done an extension every single time they've ever been asked forever. | ||
| This is the first time they haven't done an extension. | ||
| Extensions are supposed to be easy, but if they won't do an extension, they won't do any bill, even a simple bill. | ||
| And we should do our own bills. | ||
| We should get out. | ||
| We should do our own bills. | ||
| We should open up. | ||
| We should start tonight with the country's open. | ||
| Congratulations. | ||
| Then we should pass voter ID. | ||
| We should pass no mail-in voting. | ||
| We should pass all the things that we wanted to pass to make our election secure and safe because California is a disaster. | ||
| Many of the states are disasters. | ||
| So clearly the president there is pushing the filibuster. | ||
| I think if you are looking at that video, you're seeing some of those senators' faces kind of being stone-like and not showing where they're at. | ||
| Well, the Washington Examiner actually went and asked Republican senators on the Hill, getting to as many of them as possible, where they stand. | ||
| And you can see from this graphic that the president does have a point, that there are some senators that are more open to getting rid of the filibuster than perhaps they were a year ago. | ||
| But still, if you look on the left there, all of those senators in green circles do not want it to change. | ||
| They wanted to keep it in place. | ||
| And so that is what the president and the White House is up against. | ||
| I wonder, Shelby, from your conversations, how hard do you see the president and White House officials now pushing the filibuster after Tuesday's elections? | ||
| They're pushing it pretty hard. | ||
| They had just that meeting earlier this week where the filibuster was a topic of conversation, a key topic of conversation. | ||
| You've seen the president on True Social pretty much all week pushing the filibuster as early as just a few minutes ago, I believe. | ||
| But, you know, I think it's an uphill battle for this administration. | ||
| There are so many lawmakers, Republicans and Democrats, who are steadfastly opposed to this idea that President Trump and President Trump in the past has been opposed to this idea. | ||
| Now, his argument here is Democrats are going to do it anyway, so Republicans might as well do it first. | ||
| That's not an argument that is resonating with enough Republican lawmakers at this point in time. | ||
| And so you're going to hear the White House continue to push this, continue to say this is the way to end the shutdown. | ||
| But they have a lot of work to do, as you just saw with that graphic, with convincing enough Republicans to actually go forward with it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And the President has basically said that ending the filibuster could end the shutdown. | ||
| But the White House is still, to your point earlier, doing some tactics to try to get Democrats basically to CAPE. | ||
| One of those is obviously the FAA ordering flights for the administration, basically to reduce them amid the shutdown. | ||
| I wonder if you can talk about what you're hearing. | ||
| Obviously, they have cited safety for that issue, but I wonder if it's also a pressure campaign. | ||
| I think everything that the administration is doing and everything that lawmakers are doing is inherently part of a pressure campaign, right? | ||
| The more difficult things become, the more pressure lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are having in order to try to fix this thing. | ||
| And so when you have just weeks before Thanksgiving, one of the biggest travel days in the U.S., 10% of flights shutting down and people not being able to go home to their families, that's a huge deal. | ||
| And so while it is about safety, because these people aren't getting paid, there's a strain on the system, it inevitably also becomes a pressure point because these are things that the American people are going to feel. | ||
| They're going to fear them acutely, and they're going to call their lawmakers about it. | ||
| The other huge deal that we've seen evolving over the 24 hours is SNAP. | ||
| After Thursday, a federal judge appointed by former President Obama ordered the Trump administration to fully fund the program immediately, basically accusing them of slow walking that partial payment they were initially supposed to make. | ||
| We know that the White House has responded by appealing both to the appeals court and now the Supreme Court, and that is frozen. | ||
| I wonder if you've been talking to White House officials or officials within the Office of Management of Budget. | ||
| Why do they say they appealed this essential service for Americans? | ||
| I haven't gotten a clear answer on why they've appealed so far. | ||
| It just happened late last night. | ||
| But again, I do think my personal opinion is heart of this is the pressure campaign aspect. | ||
| It's also, do they have those funds? | ||
| Are these funds? | ||
| We did hear of Brooke Rollins just several days ago when she was saying that they were going to comply with the judges' court order to push out those SNAP benefits, that the administration did think that it was unconstitutional, but that they were willing to comply with that. | ||
| Something changed over the past 24, 48 hours, and they're now obviously going a little bit harder in trying to not pay these. | ||
| But again, this is one of the things that's going to have massive, massive negative consequences for the American people. | ||
| And so inevitably, whether it's a core reason or not, it's going to end up playing a role in these negotiations. | ||
| Let's invite our viewers. | ||
| And James from Silver Spring, Maryland, a Democrat, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, how are we doing this morning? | |
| Good. | ||
| How are you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, okay. | |
| I just had one question. | ||
| I just don't understand why there's not more talk about why the Republicans need the $4 trillion tax break, but always complain about everything to give to the poor. | ||
| But we aren't talking about why they need that $4 trillion tax break. | ||
| You know, could they take the $3 million and put it towards the SNAP and health care and all that? | ||
| That's all I have to say about it. | ||
| Shelby? | ||
| Well, I think that that is allocated already. | ||
| That is money that is allocated already. | ||
| But there is a question of there's a lot of things going on in the U.S. government. | ||
| And even with the shutdown, is there money that they can move around? | ||
| We saw them do it with things like military pay. | ||
| And so there has been a level of this administration for certain things trying to find the money. | ||
| And so the question, of course, that I don't know that any of us have the answer to is: do they actually have the ability, if they wanted to, to move more money around and get some of these SNAP benefits paid? | ||
| Nate from Las Vegas, a Republican. | ||
| Your line is open. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning, America. | |
| You know, I haven't heard the media mention John Quincy Adams at all. | ||
| And the reason is because he is the only president in his second term in the midterm elections who picked up seats in the Congress. | ||
| And the media doesn't want you to know this. | ||
| It's just the way the trends go. | ||
| I think Trump is going to buck his history. | ||
| I think he's going to, hopefully, we can still stay in control of the government. | ||
| We need to filibuster because we've got about a year to go. | ||
| We've got about a year to go to get this country on the right track. | ||
| The government of the United States should not be in the health care insurance business. | ||
| If Obamacare is so great, why does it need subsidies? | ||
| Okay, anytime you get the government involved, prices go up. | ||
| Okay, period. | ||
| Everybody knows that. | ||
| And if we just, we got to get that filibuster through, we've got to let Mr. Trump, President Trump, do what he does. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| I know all the automatic. | ||
| Nate, can I ask a clarifying question? | ||
| So you want the filibuster to stay or you want them to get rid of the filibuster? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I want them to do, I want them to get rid of the filibuster and get these things through. | |
| Come on. | ||
| The Democrats have shut this country down because they hate Trump. | ||
| They hate Trump for whatever reason, and the media is 99% behind them. | ||
| And what we need to do is we just need to get in there and get the government back open, get whatever they have to do, get rid of the filibuster, get rid of the whole thing. | ||
| Okay, Nate, I take your point there. | ||
| Shelby, let's talk about the filibuster again. | ||
| I mean, obviously the president's been pushing for it, but what would you say to people like Nate who say it's time to get rid of that arcane rule? | ||
| Well, that is exactly what the administration is arguing, as Nate sort of explained it pretty well right there, which is the argument that this is going to happen anyway if Democrats take control and that they need it in order to get more things done. | ||
| And as for his midterm comments, I think it's really notable. | ||
| You know, the administration is extremely aware of the risks that losing the House, losing the Senate will run for them, right? | ||
| I talked to officials before we even, before the president took office, and one of the big things they noted was you're seeing over the past year the president do an enormous amount of work. | ||
| And part of the reason that they're pushing so much so quickly is because they're viewing this term as two years, not four years, because they don't know what's going to happen after the midterms. | ||
| They've expressed optimism that they're going to continue having control over Washington, but they don't know that. | ||
| And so they're trying to get as much done as possible while they definitely have the majority. | ||
| David from St. Louis, an independent, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I like to say they should draft the state senate and they should draft the federal senate and they should draft the state House of Representatives and they should draft the state, the federal House of Representatives. | |
| And if they switched time money, they could just print and issue health care, the money for health care. | ||
| And in order to be draftable to the state or federal government, you had to be sorry, five years ago, a four-year college degree. | ||
| And then to draft the government. | ||
| And when you vote by phone, if we're voting, you assemble number code to. | ||
| David, let me ask you. | ||
| You said that you should draft the various congressional bodies, draft them into what? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Into the Senate and the House of Representatives, both state and federal. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Stephen from Kentucky, a Democrat, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, how are you? | |
| Hello, how are you this morning? | ||
| I want to just say before I begin my remarks, that man who called in from Nevada was ridiculous. | ||
| I mean, Trump is trying to impose dictatorship on this country. | ||
| That is the last thing we need. | ||
| And he sits there and gets off and talks about, you know, oh, how the media is so liberal. | ||
| And please explain to me how they covered Biden's in essence, but they refused to cover Trump in that same manner. | ||
| Now, I want to talk about his response to the election returns. | ||
| We've been seeing this quite often. | ||
| You know, maybe the reason why they keep saying it was because he wasn't on the ballot. | ||
| No, he is arrogant, ignorant, and incompetent. | ||
| He is an embarrassment to this country. | ||
| Anybody who doesn't think the same way he does is not an American. | ||
| Well, let me tell you something. | ||
| If that's the case, why should my tax dollars put the bill for his entourage and his salary? | ||
| Let his MAGA base pay for it. | ||
| Let his donors pay for it. | ||
| How dare he sit there and say that to us? | ||
| And let me tell you something. | ||
| Your political affiliation does not, your goodness or badness as a person is not, does not, your political affiliation does not determine your goodness or badness as a person. | ||
| For heaven's sake, that's ridiculous. | ||
| Stephen, do you have a question for Shelby here covering the White House? | ||
| Anything you want to know about what's happening over there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm sorry, dear. | |
| I didn't hear you. | ||
| I said, do you have a question for Shelby covering the White House? | ||
| Obviously, you have pretty strong feelings. | ||
| I wonder if you have a question about what's happening in the White House, either with Trump's response to the elections or something else. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, no, I don't. | |
| And I apologize about not having a question. | ||
| It's just, I just wanted to, you know, state how I feel because this is ridiculous. | ||
| I mean, we need to have stability and we need to have civility again. | ||
| It's like these people have had a nervous breakdown or something. | ||
| They need to get their acts together. | ||
| Okay, I take your point there. | ||
| James from Sherman, Texas, you're next, a Republican? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Maybe two topics. | ||
| The filibuster. | ||
| Now, we all remember recently that when Biden was the president and the Democrats controlled the Senate, they all voted to end the Democrats, all voted to end the filibuster, other than Senator from West Virginia and from Arizona. | ||
| Now, the topic of ending the filibuster has come up. | ||
| And while Democrats all voted to end it recently, you know, a few years ago, this time around, they all oppose it. | ||
| So clearly, you know, this is just these are political strategies when filibuster serves your purposes. | ||
| They want to keep it when it when it doesn't. | ||
| James, can I ask where you fall on the filibuster question? | ||
| Are you pro getting rid of it or you want it to stay? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I prefer to keep it simply because there should be a difference between the House and the Senate. | |
| The Senate should be the chamber that requires more than just a simple majority. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So as a Republican, you are against where Trump's position is now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I am against whether it's Trump's position or the Democrat or the Republican position. | |
| I think just as a matter of carefully considering issues and having a larger consensus, you know, having at least a sense of some bipartisan consensus. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And so that my position would be to keep the filibuster. | |
| Now, the other thing that I would like to introduce would be: we just simply must have term limits. | ||
| Now, the difficulty with that is the people that it would require would be Congress. | ||
| And it's not Congress, you know, they'll often argue, well, we do have term limits. | ||
| It's called elections. | ||
| We just know that that system does not work. | ||
| I think everybody, Republican, Democrat, Independent, all of us, should contact our representatives and say, this is a must-do item. | ||
| We must have term limits. | ||
| Okay, James, I take your point. | ||
| Shelby, has there been any discussion about term limits in this session of Congress or as Trump has been in the administration for a second time? | ||
| It's interesting because it really hasn't come up all that much in the White House. | ||
| But what I will say is I remember I covered this presidential campaign and I covered Donald Trump. | ||
| I covered Nikki Haley. | ||
| I covered Joe Biden. | ||
| And it was a really big topic of conversation on the campaign trail. | ||
| And I do think that there are a number of lawmakers who would not be opposed to putting in term limits. | ||
| But again, it is something that needs, A, more fervent support, but also, B, it has to be at the forefront of lawmakers' minds. | ||
| And with everything else that has gone on in this administration and everything that the White House has been doing, it's not in the top 20 focuses for lawmakers. | ||
| Sheila from Youngstown, Ohio, a Democrat, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, hi. | |
| I wanted to talk about the ACA. | ||
| All insurance is subsidized. | ||
| Private insurance, that's subsidized, Medicare, especially Medicare Advantage. | ||
| Oh, yes. | ||
| And the lawmakers' insurance is subsidized. | ||
| Why are the GOP so afraid of giving every American coverage? | ||
| And also, concerning the SNAP, could you please make it clear to people, first of all, once we lose that ACA, small business owners who don't have insurance, a lot of people who will be losing their jobs to artificial intelligence, you'll find yourself needing insurance and you won't be able to get it. | ||
| So, and once, look what he did with SNAP. | ||
| The only thing he cared about was to make sure the SNAP payments were stopped. | ||
| I mean, what kind of monster is this? | ||
| He cuts money to the food banks. | ||
| Medicaid cuts a trillion dollars. | ||
| Shelby, could you answer the question on the policy front, at least, of where they are with the discussions on the ACA and potentially SNAP? | ||
| Every time I talk to Republicans, whether it's people inside the White House or people outside of the White House, their argument is they want to change the system, that the current system as it exists is not efficient, that it's not working for the majority of the American people. | ||
| Now, the big question that people have had is, okay, well, what's your plan? | ||
| And I think that's a key point because we haven't heard Republicans articulate a clear-driven plan that they would put forward as an alternative. | ||
| And so that's the big question that Democrats have when you have Republicans saying, we'll give you a vote on ACA subsidies. | ||
| We'll work with you to reform this system. | ||
| Democrats' question is, okay, but what is your specific plan to do so? | ||
| And because they haven't heard of that plan, I think Democrats are reluctant to go along and say, okay, we'll agree to open up the government in exchange for these conversations. | ||
| I think one interesting thing that you reported this week, Shelby, you and your Semaphore colleague, Burgess Everett, was a piece with the headline, prioritize the economy, prioritize economy over foreign policy, Republicans tell Trump. | ||
| It's a fascinating look at basically what some of those affordability conversations are coming out of Tuesday's elections. | ||
| We were also talking about the Affordable Care Act, and we're also talking about things of that nature. | ||
| Even former Trump's senior advisor, Steve Bannon, says that the White House has to focus more on the economy. | ||
| I wonder, what, can you explain to us what you heard in that reporting? | ||
| Well, it's pretty simple. | ||
| Republican lawmakers are saying, we think what you're doing on foreign policy is great, but you're doing too much of it. | ||
| We're hearing too much of foreign policy. | ||
| And at the end of the day, voters care about kitchen table issues. | ||
| They care about things that are affecting them directly, right? | ||
| So it's great that you were able to stop the war between Israel and Hamas. | ||
| But that's not something that voters are feeling day in and day out when they go to the grocery store, when they fill up their car with gas. | ||
| And so Republican lawmakers are saying, awesome job on foreign policy, but that's really been the focus of this administration this year. | ||
| You're seeing the president do a lot, a lot on foreign policy, and lawmakers are urging him to go back and talk about the economy. | ||
| Because remember, one of the big reasons that Donald Trump won the presidential election was because voters were dissatisfied with how Democrats were handling the economy. | ||
| They were dissatisfied about the affordability issue when it came to Democrats. | ||
| And Donald Trump talked a lot about that on the campaign trail. | ||
| And so they're hoping that he gets back to sort of that 2024 presidential campaign mode. | ||
| So the pressure you described to talk more about affordability, I want to actually listen to the president kind of responding to that yesterday at the White House when he was sitting with Hungary's prime minister, Viktor Orbán. | ||
| Take a listen here. | ||
| I just heard this yesterday: that Walmart said that the Thanksgiving was 25% more expensive, 25% more expensive under Biden. | ||
| That's a big number, to me, that's a big number because Walmart's respected. | ||
| I mean, Walmart is Walmart, and they're giving you prices. | ||
| So that would mean that the whole series of pricing and costs, the groceries and everything else, it was a conjob. | ||
| It was a conjugate. | ||
| Affordability, they call it, was a conjob by the Democrats. | ||
| The Democrats are good at a few things, cheating on elections and conning people with facts that aren't true. | ||
| So there we heard President Trump saying the Democrats' position on affordability was a conjob. | ||
| He said later on that he didn't want to talk about it. | ||
| But to your point of your reporting, Steve Bannon, former Trump advisor, he said to Politico just a few days after the election, he said, remember, some of the exit polls, people didn't focus on affordability, but the economy. | ||
| It's twofold. | ||
| Not just affordability across things, but also jobs. | ||
| We have to put American citizens first, not just America, America citizens first. | ||
| I think President Trump's agenda is perfect for that. | ||
| I think President Trump will go around and maybe give more speeches and more things domestically, maybe take a few less international trips for the next few months or so and just get focused back with the American people. | ||
| Do you think that the White House is interested in this message and will we see a sort of pivot from them? | ||
| I do think that the administration is interested in this message, but their argument is we're already talking about the economy, right? | ||
| And so I actually asked somebody whether they would consider this a pivot and they said point blank, we are not pivoting because their point of view is we're already talking about the economy. | ||
| I do think that they're going to start talking more about the economy. | ||
| But I thought Donald Trump's comments were really interesting because it reminded me of when Biden was president and he started pushing forward the Bidenomics. | ||
| And it was not, it just simply was not the reality that a lot of voters were feeling on the ground. | ||
| And that's what frustrated those voters. | ||
| And so I think that the administration, when they talk about the economy in this way by only saying everything is great, I'm telling you that everything is great, is that it could alienate voters, just like we saw President Biden do when he was trying to push Bidenomics. | ||
| When it's not the reality that voters are feeling on the ground, it doesn't matter what the numbers are. | ||
| Paul from Port Chester, New York at Independent, your line is open? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| The way I understand it is normally after a CR is passed, the Senate moves on to the appropriations bills. | ||
| And the Health and Human Services Bill is the bill that I think is currently funding the health care subsidies and also requires 60 votes to pass a new one. | ||
| So my question is, couldn't the Democrats have put a final point on the debate by withholding their votes on the actual HHS bill instead of shutting down the government on a CR? | ||
| Shelby? | ||
| Yeah, I think that there's always argument that Democrats or Republicans could have messaged better, particularly you're seeing this cycle. | ||
| Democrats kind of struggle to figure out what their core message on various issues are going to be because they are still looking for that sort of next leader of their party. | ||
| So there's always talk of Democrats could have messaged more effectively or they could have done this differently. | ||
| But I think at the end of the day, this was a fight that they felt a lot of their voters wanted. | ||
| And so you're seeing really for the first time since Donald Trump took office, Democrats who are coalesced around this strategy. | ||
| And that strategy happened to be, we're not going to vote for this CR, the government is shut down. | ||
| Barbara from California, Democrat, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I just wanted to call in and make a comment about basically the difference in Bidenomics and these Trumponomics is that these Trumponomics is for the billionaires. | |
| That big old tax break, if they would talk about that more, they talk about the liberal media. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's no such thing as that. | |
| These people need to talk about what really, really counts and what's really, really brewing and what's umbrella over the whole thing. | ||
| And that's these big billionaire tax cuts that Trumponomics is trying to do for the billionaires. | ||
| Not necessarily the Republicans, because the Republicans are hungry today too and worried about whether or not they're going to get to go to the doctor. | ||
| They need to talk about that more, and they need to talk about the Epstein fouls. | ||
| The Epstein fouls keep being pushed to the back seat. | ||
| If the media was so liberal, why would they allow that to happen? | ||
| Barbara, can I ask you by saying they need to talk about it more, are you talking about Democrats need to talk about it more or the media needs to talk about it more? | ||
| Both. | ||
| Shelby, do you have a response to that? | ||
| You know, I think it goes back to my earlier comment just now of there are so many different ways to message effectively. | ||
| And certainly Democrats could be doing things differently. | ||
| Republicans could be doing things differently. | ||
| But at the end of the day, you know, Bidenomics and what Trump is doing with the economy are very different. | ||
| They're doing different things, but the messaging is the same. | ||
| You're seeing two presidents who are arguing that their economic policy is working for the American people despite the fact that that's not how a lot of Americans are feeling on the ground. | ||
| And so that's where those two very different policies sort of become one, in my opinion, is the messaging. | ||
| Diane from Winter Park, Florida, a Republican, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, thank you. | |
| I wanted to ask if it would be possible for the Senate to carve out a rule whereby the nuclear option is used just specifically, very specifically, for a clean CR. | ||
| Clean would have to be defined. | ||
| Clean CR that is on the table for 30 days and then is not agreed to. | ||
| Only under those circumstances does the nuclear option then kick in just for that very specific thing so that the government is not held hostage. | ||
| I'd also like to say with the ACA, I wanted just to recommend to my fellow Americans, if you go on C-SPAN and listen to Ron Johnson's committee hearing from Thursday, it is very detailed and it's very specific as to why the ACA is really not beneficial to the American people that the money ends up getting funneled to the insurance companies. | ||
| One example they give is Okay, Diane, I'm going to put this to Shelby now. | ||
| Shelby, for the first part of the question, is it possible to do a more narrow elimination of the filibuster for the CR? | ||
| You know, I am not going to pretend that I'm a Capitol Hill reporter. | ||
| I think it would be very difficult. | ||
| I think I don't know the logistics about it, quite frankly, but I do think it would be very difficult. | ||
| Anytime you get any sort of law that is extremely narrow or cuts a bunch of carve-outs, it raises a lot more questions. | ||
| Lawmakers are going to have concerns, and they're going to have the same concerns, I think, that they would by just ending the filibuster itself, which is, well, if we do this, then aren't Democrats just going to turn around and do this? | ||
| So anything you sort of do opens a whole new can of worms that I just don't know enough Republican lawmakers are willing to open. | ||
| Dan from Tennessee, a Democrat, your line's open. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, ladies. | |
| It's a privilege to speak with you again. | ||
| I was wondering if the guest there is doing enough news stories on the Medicare fraud by large companies and entities. | ||
| We know that there's been Medicare fraud, waste, and abuse by the average Joe for eons, but these are printouts that are available to anybody online from the U.S. Attorney's Office from the Middle District of Tennessee. | ||
| But for example, there are three examples. | ||
| Livingston Regional Hospital, LLC, agrees to settle False Claims Act allegations to the tune of $784,000. | ||
| Another example, Jamestown pharmacists arrested and charged with health care fraud and aggravated identity theft in a multi-million dollar health care fraud scheme. | ||
| And that was after 18 or 8 other individuals were charged in that scheme. | ||
| Third example, landowner and marketing company owner, both found guilty. | ||
| So Dan, let me hop in here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So what is your question to Shelby? | |
| My question is, we've lost over 100,000 journalists in this country the past decade or two, and that's part of the problem. | ||
| Are you researching these type of stories and bringing that to the attention of people that think it's all from the Medicare and health care fraud is all poor people and middle-class people? | ||
| Okay, Shelby. | ||
| Well, you know, I agree that there are not enough journalists in this country. | ||
| This specific story I had not heard of, so now I'm going to have to go home and research it so you learn something new every day. | ||
| Okay, as we wrap up here, Shelby, tell us what you will be watching out for just this weekend and obviously next week. | ||
| Well, next week we have more foreign leaders coming to visit, and so I think that's going to be notable. | ||
| But I'm also going to be looking for whether there's any more of a shift in how you hear Donald Trump talk and also in how you see what he's doing, right? | ||
| He obviously is still focused on the foreign policy aspect, but is there going, is that pressure going to sort of get to him? | ||
| And are we going to hear more about the economic plans? | ||
| I'm going to be interested to see what the next development is on SNAP benefits. | ||
| I do think that both sides of this shutdown are reaching sort of a maximum capacity moment. | ||
| And so the other thing I'm going to be looking for is any sort of significant movement on ending the shutdown. | ||
| I think it's coming soon. | ||
| I could be wrong. | ||
| And of course, on Sunday, the White House said that the president will be going to the Commander's Gate here in D.C., so we'll also be looking out maybe for the next step. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Well, Shelby Talcott covers the White House for Semaphore. | ||
| Thank you so much for your time this morning. | ||
| That is all for our program today. | ||
| Another edition of Washington Journal will be around tomorrow at 7 a.m. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We hope you tune in. | |
| 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. | ||
| And coming up Sunday morning, Washington Examiner Magazine executive editor James Antel on Democratic victories in recent elections and what it could mean for them, Republicans, and the Trump administration in the future. | ||
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| Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold new original series this Sunday with our guest, the Chronicler of Adventures, award-winning best-selling author David Graham, whose books include The Lost City of Z, Killers of the Flower Moon, and The Wager. | ||
| He joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein. | ||
| So what about this fact, about this occurrence, made you think this could be something worth your time? | ||
| And I started to realize that this odd little old manuscript contained the seeds of one of the most extraordinary stories of survival and mayhem I had ever come across. | ||
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unidentified
|
Watch America's Book Club with David Graham this Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | |
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| Democrats swept the 2025 elections on Tuesday. | ||
| Here are some of the headlines and key races. | ||
| On NPR.org, Zoran Mondani wins New York City mayoral race, an historic victory for progressives. | ||
| The 19th News writes, Virginia elects Democrat Abigail Spanberger as state's first woman governor. | ||
| The New Jersey Monitor has Mikey Sherrill celebrates win in New Jersey's governor's race as supporters cheer. | ||
| Blue is back. | ||
| And the Associated Press reports California voters approved new congressional district boundaries, delivering a victory for Democrats in the state-by-state redistricting battle that will help determine which party wins control of the U.S. House in 2026. | ||
| Over the next few hours, we'll watch the victory and concession speeches from these contests, beginning with Governor Gavin Newsom after passage of California's Proposition 50. | ||
| Well, good evening, everybody. | ||
| And let me underscore, it's been a good evening for everybody, not just the Democratic Party. | ||
| But what a night for the Democratic Party. | ||
| A party that is in its ascendancy. | ||
| A party that's on its toes no longer on its heels from coast to coast, sea to shining sea. | ||
| But it was not just a victory tonight for the Democratic Party. | ||
| It was a victory for the United States of America, for the people of this country and the principles that our founding fathers lived and died for. | ||
| And so we're proud. | ||
| We're proud here in California to be part of this narrative this evening. | ||
| We're proud of the work that the people of the state of California did tonight to send a powerful message to an historic president. | ||
| Donald Trump is an historic president. | ||
| He is the most historically unpopular president in modern history. | ||
| In every critical category, Donald Trump is underwater. | ||
| He promised to make us healthier. | ||
| He promised to make us wealthier. | ||
| We're sicker and poorer. | ||
| And he fundamentally understands that. | ||
| Why else? | ||
| Why else would he call Greg Abbott saying he's entitled to five seats? | ||
| Why else is he trying to rig the midterm elections before one single vote is even cast? | ||
| He understands his position at this moment in the United States of America. | ||
| One thing he never counted on, though, was the state of California. | ||
| Instead of agonizing over the state of our nation, we organized in an unprecedented way in a 90-day sprint. | ||
| People from all over the United States of America contributed their voices and their support for this initiative. | ||
| We stood tall and we stood firm in response to Donald Trump's recklessness. | ||
| And tonight, after poking the bear, this bear roared with an unprecedented turnout in a special election with an extraordinary result. | ||
| None of us, however, are naive. | ||
| This is a pattern. | ||
| This is a practice. | ||
| Donald Trump's efforts to rig the midterm election continue to this day. | ||
| And I'll reinforce that in just a moment. | ||
| You're seeing him take action all across this country, not just in Texas. |