| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| the MAGA GOP. | ||
| And that's something that shocks me because what you need to know is that who actually asked me to run for the legislature in 1984 was the Republican majority leader. | ||
| Can you imagine that today? | ||
| The Republican majority leader watched me in the Constitutional Convention and said, what are you doing in the fall, Arnie? | ||
| Ever thought about running for the legislature? | ||
| And I remember looking at him, Kimberly, and saying, but I think I'm a Democrat. | ||
| And he said, we could tell that, Arnie. | ||
| No, no, no, I think I'm a liberal Democrat. | ||
| Then we could tell that too, Arnie. | ||
| And then I said, why are you asking? | ||
| And listen to his answer. | ||
| This is 1984, not true today. | ||
| He said, 75% of what we do in the New Hampshire legislature is about what's good for New Hampshire. | ||
| And 25% of it is partisan. | ||
| I think you need to be there for the 75%. | ||
| I'm not a partisan. | ||
| I'm a policy person. | ||
| And yet today, I'm forced to actually make decisions. | ||
| And when I look at the Republican Party, they're not offering me a choice. | ||
| I know you were listening to a bit of our last segment, and so I'll pose the same question to you. | ||
| How much do you think that the recent government shutdown is going to matter in the upcoming midterm elections? | ||
| Well, it's going to matter because we're probably not going to get anything in the way of the ACA credits. | ||
| So what we know is that when you look at the Tuesday election, it was really, it seemed like a romp for Democrats. | ||
| Okay, you look around the country from Georgia to Texas to New York to New Jersey, and you saw Democrats win. | ||
| So can I first take that back? | ||
| Democrats didn't win. | ||
| You know who won? | ||
| No kings won. | ||
| People weren't embracing a party. | ||
| They were screaming for change. | ||
| They were looking for someone who would offer them policy prescriptions that really addressed affordability, didn't just use the word, but actually spoke to it. | ||
| You saw in New Jersey, they talked about electric rates. | ||
| You saw with Sauron, what did he talk about? | ||
| He talked about transportation. | ||
| He talked about housing. | ||
| He talked about child care. | ||
| He gave you specifics. | ||
| People are realizing that you can't use the word because Trump used the word affordability. | ||
| And now he's made it so unaffordable for us and the struggle has only increased. | ||
| So that's what I see. | ||
| And then after this Tuesday election, which clearly showed that people were looking for a fight, what we see is that eight Democrats caved. | ||
| And the reason is they finally actually had some leverage. | ||
| And they didn't make a deal. | ||
| Donald Trump never showed up. | ||
| He didn't care. | ||
| He was having parties. | ||
| He was traveling around the world. | ||
| He doesn't care about government. | ||
| He doesn't care about policy. | ||
| And then they claimed that they made a deal, that they would be able to write the ACA bill and return the credits in the Senate. | ||
| We already know Speaker Johnson has basically said, eh, I'm not sure I'm going to bring it up. | ||
| And of course, just because you write a bill doesn't mean that bill passes the Senate. | ||
| And of course, then again, Donald Trump would have to sign it, and you know he won't. | ||
| So you didn't get anything. | ||
| And then when you look into the deal, it wasn't a clean reopen. | ||
| What did they do? | ||
| They banned hemp products. | ||
| What did they do? | ||
| They gave these eight Republican senators $500,000 a shot to sue the government for the government doing something that was absolutely legal and it only applied to the Senate and it was backdated to 2022? | ||
| You know, you begin to look at all these things and then you even look at SNAP. | ||
| So one of the claims to fame is that right now the result of the bill that they passed or the deal that they passed said that there could still be another shutdown at the end of January, right? | ||
| Well, except for SNAP and the Department of Agriculture. | ||
| That goes to the end of the fiscal year. | ||
| And then you look in the bill and you see all this money for SNAP. | ||
| Here's the problem. | ||
| Right after the deal passed, guess what came out of the Department of Agriculture? | ||
| All of a sudden there was an announcement that everyone needs to reapply for SNAP. | ||
| What the H is that about? | ||
| That's about making it more difficult for people to access the benefits they deserve. | ||
| And let me remind everyone: just because you give Donald Trump and his administration money doesn't mean that they actually send the money to the people that need it. | ||
| And the people that wrote that deal, and I'm going to put it in quotes, they understood that. | ||
| So if you look through the language, there is no demand that this money must be delivered. | ||
| There's no requirement that the old rules of SNAP still apply because within literally a day or two, they suddenly tell everyone you have to reapply for SNAP because of the claim of what? | ||
| Of fraud. | ||
| Ha, fraud, my boy. | ||
| So both of your states in New Hampshire, both of your states, Democratic U.S. senators, Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hawson, broke with the party's leadership and voted in favor of this deal that ended the government shutdown. | ||
| I'm guessing you're not in support of that. | ||
| So let's remember something. | ||
| First of all, Jeannie's not running again. | ||
| Okay, so Shaheen is not running. | ||
| In fact, all the people that voted for this, you know, that came up with the deal, none of them are going to be returning. | ||
| So in a lot of ways, they had that mode of cover. | ||
| They didn't have to worry about it, except for Maggie Hassen. | ||
| I mean, she, again, she's not running in 2026. | ||
| But let me explain, Maggie. | ||
| So Jeannie is not running. | ||
| Jean Shaheen is not running. | ||
| Although her daughter, by the way, is running for Congress. | ||
| And this really put her daughter in a real pickle. | ||
| Does she side with her mother or does she side with the base of the Democratic Party? | ||
| My understanding is that she's not siding with her mother. | ||
| So that should tell you something, all right? | ||
| Maggie Hassan, the other senator who voted for it, Maggie Hassen has an interesting history. | ||
| She has voted more with MAGA Republicans than any sitting member of Congress. | ||
| So when you think of Democrats voting with MAGA, you usually think of Fetterman, all right? | ||
| It's not Fetterman. | ||
| It's my sitting senator. | ||
| So she was already predisposed to do this. | ||
| And let me also remind everyone that they were already negotiating a deal before the Tuesday election. | ||
| And then when the Tuesday election shocked everyone, because the numbers were huge, because there was double digits, it showed a passion and commitment to fight, not only from the Democratic Party, but frankly, from the American people. | ||
| It was like Tuesday never existed because then they went to the deal. | ||
| And of course, what's a deal when the MAGA not only gets everything they want, but then you have to ask, and what did you get? | ||
| You reopened a government that is so crippled already because of Doge, that is already making an assault on everything we value. | ||
| And what we know is not only has affordability not been addressed by this Congress, which never shows up, but now people have to make Sophie's choice. | ||
| Will I be able to keep my health care or pay my rent? | ||
| Will I be able to keep my health care or pay for the car payment? | ||
| Because the cost is going to explode. | ||
| I was going to actually play Senator Hassan's comments last Sunday after voting for the measure to proceed with the bill to reopen the government amid the Democratic criticism. | ||
| Please do. | ||
| The real question is: why would a President of the United States pit hungry children against sick children? | ||
| And that is what President Trump has done. | ||
| I mean, this is outrageous. | ||
| We can't reach agreement on government funding, so the government shuts down. | ||
| And even though the law is clear that he could fund SNAP benefits during a shutdown, he did not. | ||
| And then he also said, and by the way, I don't really care if people's health insurance premiums get so high they can't afford their care. | ||
| That's on Donald Trump. | ||
| My vote today was to do two things, both equally morally important and imperative. | ||
| One is to make sure that the government is functioning so that our kids eat, so that our elderly citizens eat, so that our air traffic controllers can get some sleep and earn money, get paid while they are working, so that our veterans are protected, and Continue the fight to a realistic platform to get the premium tax cuts done. | ||
| And if that is not successful, then shame on the Republican Party and shame on Donald Trump. | ||
| But the American people will see who stands with them on health care and who does not. | ||
| The Democrats who supported this deal have caused a lot of controversy, and this has led some to even call for Senator Schumer, who did not support the deal, to step down over what many are saying is a lack of leadership in the party. | ||
| What do you think of those calls for Senator Schumer to step down as leader of the Democrats in the Senate, as well as the divisions that this vote is stoking within the party? | ||
| So look what the Democrats refer to as an example of leadership in the Democratic Party, and they refer to Nancy Pelosi. | ||
| And when Nancy Pelosi was the head of the Democrats in Congress and basically the Speaker of the House, she would never bring a bill to the floor unless she knew she had all her ducks in line. | ||
| She had all her Democrats with her. | ||
| She knew what leadership looked like and that you needed to round up the troops. | ||
| What you have here in the Senate was eight Democrats that split from the Democratic Party and Schumer basically saying, oh, I disagree with them. | ||
| Well, if you disagree with them, where was your leadership? | ||
| And one of the things you have to start asking was, did he really disagree with them or were they his cover? | ||
| Because we know that there's a pounding of a drum in New York for AOC to run against Chuck Schumer. | ||
| So Chuck Schumer is not just looking at whether he'll be the head of the Democrats in the Senate. | ||
| He's looking whether he will even keep his seat. | ||
| So that's kind of going to be a mugwump. | ||
| Because I want to actually play a clip of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was on Capitol Hill on Wednesday and asked about this, the future of the Democratic Party and support for Senator Schumer during the shutdown. | ||
| Here's what she had to say. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Congresswoman. | |
| Will Senator Schumer stay as minority leader? | ||
| I think what is so important for folks to understand is that this problem is bigger than one person. | ||
| And it actually is bigger than the minority leader in the Senate. | ||
| You had eight Senate Democrats who coordinated their own votes on this, as well as you have two retiring members. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Many of them are also up in several cycles from now with the hope that people are going to forget this moment. | |
| And I think what's important is that we understand that this is actually, this is not just, a leader is reflected, is a reflection of the party. | ||
| And Senate Democrats have selected their leadership to represent them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And so the question needs to be bigger than just one person. | |
| We have several Senate primaries this cycle. | ||
| I know I'm being asked about New York. | ||
| That is years from now. | ||
| I have to remind my own constituents because they think that this election is this year. | ||
| We actually do have Senate elections this year. | ||
| And my hope is that people across this country actually participate in their primary elections in selecting their leadership. | ||
| Your thoughts on what she said there. | ||
| She's absolutely right. | ||
| It's not one person. | ||
| There's absolutely no question. | ||
| The question then becomes, will the Democrats fight? | ||
| And you had a caller that called in in the earlier hour. | ||
| And both parties have been bought. | ||
| Let's be honest with you. | ||
| Citizens United did not do us a favor. | ||
| Citizens United just continued to open the floodgates. | ||
| And what you see is you have one party that's completely bought, okay? | ||
| Sold completely. | ||
| And then the Democrats, what this does is what they buy is everything gets slowed down. | ||
| Nothing really happens. | ||
| Everything becomes a distraction. | ||
| So instead of responding to the immediacy of the moment, instead of raising the minimum wage, instead of giving us a public option, instead of addressing things to invest in infrastructure in a timely fashion, what money does to both is it corrodes democracy. | ||
| And then not only does it corrode democracy, but then you throw in gerrymandering, and what you get is this kind of partisan gerrymandering. | ||
| So basically, you don't get representation of the people. | ||
| You get politics that ultimately lets politicians pick their voters. | ||
| So the system has rotted. | ||
| The system has rotted. | ||
| I don't want to go back. | ||
| I want to go forward. | ||
| I want to improve. | ||
| I want to fix what's wrong with it. | ||
| AOC is absolutely right. | ||
| It's not one man. | ||
| We have now created a system where they're too old, they're too rich, they've been around too long, and they've forgotten what it's like to ultimately not be able to afford to go to the doctor when they're sick. | ||
| You know, one of the reasons why Tuesday was so important and they should not have made the deal is that for the first time we had leverage. | ||
| And we had proof of the leverage because the public spoke and they spoke resoundingly. | ||
| They wanted people to fight. | ||
| And just when you want people to fight, what do you do? | ||
| You do what Democrats do over and over again. | ||
| You disappoint. | ||
| We're ready to take your calls for Arnie Arneson, host of The Attitude with Arnie Arneson. | ||
| Let's start with Robert in Texas on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Robert. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Can you hear me? | |
| Yes, I can hear you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, my question to you, Nick, is do you think the president is hiding something with the SPN file? | |
| I mean, think about this. | ||
| When we first came into office, going down the escalator, he said rich fang people could do what they want to. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So he went there. | |
| And now we come back today. | ||
| We got the SPN file. | ||
| And he seems doing everything he can to keep up with them. | ||
| Just seeing what you know. | ||
| So do you think he's hiding anything? | ||
| So I posed. | ||
| So, Carler, thank you for that question. | ||
| Because I woke up at 4.30 this morning on my Facebook page. | ||
| And I went immediately to Facebook. | ||
| And I went, Trump and Epstein are different sides of the same coin. | ||
| All right? | ||
| They are the same. | ||
| They are the same. | ||
| Of course, Trump is trying to hide something, but that's been his whole life. | ||
| His whole life is about distraction and hiding. | ||
| His whole life is about corruption and blaming someone else. | ||
| Well, you know that they just had that dump from the Epstein estate. | ||
| And what is it? | ||
| They found his name referenced 1,600 and some odd times. | ||
| Now, you don't reference a name unless you have a relationship. | ||
| You don't reference a name unless you know something. | ||
| And let me just say something. | ||
| So even if Trump did not sleep with a 15-year-old, which over a thousand young girls basically were raped, and this was a kind of sex trafficking at a level we can't even imagine. | ||
| But let me remind you, I'm going to take you back to something else. | ||
| Remember when the pedophile scandal happened in the Catholic Church? | ||
| What we know is who did we blame? | ||
| Did we blame the priests that were accused of pedophilia? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| But who else did we blame? | ||
| We blamed the cardinals and the bishops who knew. | ||
| Who knew? | ||
| And did nothing about it. | ||
| And instead of removing these pedophile priests, they put them in another congregation. | ||
| They sent them away, but they didn't shelve them and stop them. | ||
| There were so many people that knew, and absolutely there is no way Trump did not know. | ||
| He knew that Epstein liked younger women. | ||
| He knew that. | ||
| What did that mean? | ||
| Trust me, they were bonded at the hip for years. | ||
| There is so much in the little black books that they find about their connection. | ||
| This is affinity that Trump has with Epstein. | ||
| He may not have gone as far as Epstein went, but you know what? | ||
| The fact that he had knowledge and did nothing about it, epox on him, and all those women were sacrificed because too many people knew and nobody did anything about it. | ||
| And to some extent, I wonder if Trump aided and abetted this. | ||
| Speaker Johnson has promised to vote next week on the measure that would mandate the full disclosure of the Justice Department Epstein's files. | ||
| Where do you think this is headed and what new do you think we might learn? | ||
| Well, I think you're going to see a lot more Republican votes for this than we've ever seen before. | ||
| This is one situation that is actually bipartisan. | ||
| And maybe part of the reason it's bipartisan is not only because the whole Epstein saga was really pushed by the MAGA base. | ||
| Let's remember, Democrats kind of rolled their eyes. | ||
| They really weren't as attached to this issue until ultimately we began to learn more and more about it. | ||
| And then we found out more and more about the former prime ministers and the princes and the oligarchs and the billionaires and the politicians and the heads of universities that were connected to these poor, poor women that were raped and abused. | ||
| And all of a sudden we wanted to weigh in. | ||
| No sooner did we want to weigh in than all of a sudden Donald Trump disavowed any knowledge. | ||
| All of a sudden there wasn't a file. | ||
| So I think for the first time now you have such a huge public reaction to this that Republicans have cover to basically vote against their president because their president isn't asking them to vote about policy. | ||
| He's asking them to deny reality and protect him for what? | ||
| For something about a pedophile and a sex trafficker. | ||
| Sorry, that doesn't sell in Peoria. | ||
| John is in Akron, Ohio on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, thanks for taking my call. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I have like five points. | ||
| Before I talk about Epstein, he's like the last point. | ||
| Shutdown, definitely a Democratic thing. | ||
| Why'd they wait 45 days? | ||
| And they threw the guys that changed the vote to support the Republican side. | ||
| These guys aren't up for re-election. | ||
| There's some kind of thing. | ||
| Schumer wanted this to end. | ||
| He used them as a stateville. | ||
| Number two, postponement of the swearing in the congresswoman had no effect on anything. | ||
| The Epstein files are coming out. | ||
| The federal employees during the shutdown, as a former federal employee, shutdowns were an opportunity to save money, forced savings. | ||
| It's like a IRA, it's like the IRS return check at the end of the year when you do your taxes. | ||
| It's forced savings, 45 days. | ||
| People can't save that much money. | ||
| And the next thing was the, yes, the Epstein files. | ||
| These women, these girls, these children, totally using their feminine attributes, trying to join jet-setters. | ||
| They're 15-year-old girls. | ||
| You know, 15-year-old girls. | ||
| John, are you implying that the victims of Jeffrey Epstein's alleged sex trafficking ring were bringing it on themselves? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, they didn't kidnap these girls. | |
| These girls are wandering the streets and looking for. | ||
| I wasn't. | ||
| All right, let's get your response to some of those points that John made. | ||
| I'm not even going to discuss the Epstein thing because he's so off the radar on this story. | ||
| It is the more you find out about what happened, trust me, these women had no control. | ||
| These men had total control. | ||
| And they were 15 and 14 and 13. | ||
| I don't understand this, but that's okay if that's what you want to say. | ||
| And let's talk about the shutdown and what's happening to federal workers. | ||
| What did he say it was? | ||
| It was forced savings. | ||
| Ask the air traffic controllers about their forced savings. | ||
| Not only did they have to show up for work with no money, they still had to pay for daycare. | ||
| They still had to pay for transportation. | ||
| They still had to pay for food. | ||
| Some of them had to find second jobs. | ||
| They didn't force save. | ||
| They were exhausted. | ||
| They were frightened. | ||
| They were threatened. | ||
| This didn't do anything in the way of benefit. | ||
| How many of those federal workers were on food lines? | ||
| This isn't forced savings. | ||
| I don't know what planet he's on, but it's not one that actually faces the reality of federal workers. | ||
| They were in distress. | ||
| There is no question about it. | ||
| This is not a savings account. | ||
| This is literally stripping away all their sense of security. | ||
| And a lot of them aren't even sure that they'll be coming back to a job. | ||
| So we already know what Doge has done to the federal workforce. | ||
| Well, imagine adding this to that. | ||
| Who wants to show up for work when the federal government is trying every way possible to basically undermine your ability to work? | ||
| All right, let's hear from Richard in Savannah, Georgia, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Richard. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My question is: for someone who cares about the women and the children, for over four years, we watched around 10 million to 20 million people come in from the border. | ||
| I live in Georgia. | ||
| They had a bill passed called the Lake and Riley Bill. | ||
| We had Lake and Riley get raped and murdered. | ||
| We had Rachel Moran. | ||
| We had a beautiful 12-year-old girl in Houston, Jocelyn Nungry, get raped and murdered by illegals coming across the border. | ||
| Why do we want to watch another episode of people come across the border under Democrat-run policies, et cetera, sanctuary cities where that beautiful lady from Ukraine was murdered by sanctuary city policy? | ||
| Why do we want to vote for Democrats and have more of that year after year after year for people who care about children and women, which I do, and I'm an American, okay? | ||
| I do not want more policies for Democrats that hurt women and children. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| So let me just say something. | ||
| 99% of the people that come across the border don't fit that profile. | ||
| And if you want to have a Lincoln-Riley bill, why don't you have an Epstein-Riley bill, okay? | ||
| Because let's talk about what happened as a result of Epstein. | ||
| But notice, we don't notice when it's white rich men in America with an American passport that rape. | ||
| All of a sudden, we notice the five to ten that come across the border. | ||
| So many of those undocumented immigrants, what are they doing now? | ||
| They're actually supporting women and children because they're working in agriculture, making sure you can afford the price of your lettuce, because they're working in nursing homes to take care of your grandparents, because they're replacing your roof after a hurricane. | ||
| They are making it possible because they are doing essential jobs that we either don't have enough Americans to do or they won't do it. | ||
| And what's so interesting is that I went down to New Orleans after Katrina, all right? | ||
| And I went down to sort of help rebuild. | ||
| And what I noticed then was that here was a community that used to have a significant number of people of color. | ||
| But this time there weren't blacks. | ||
| There were a lot of people speaking Spanish, repairing roofs, doing everything. | ||
| It felt like a different culture change. | ||
| And then I went into downtown New Orleans and they were selling t-shirts. | ||
| And you know what the t-shirts said in New Orleans as they were rebuilding after Katrina? | ||
| They had four letters, F-E-M-A. | ||
| You know what it stood for? | ||
| Find every Mexican Available. | ||
| You see, the undocumented workers are making it possible for our society to actually exist and for our economy to go forward. | ||
| So yes, you can tell me about those people that were horrific, but I can also point to a lot of horrific people in this country that get cover. | ||
| Kenneth is in Columbus, Georgia, on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Kenneth. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| The first thing I have to say is: wow, this is this whole communication that we got going on this morning is so fantastic. | ||
| You're hitting every point. | ||
| The one point that I got two points. | ||
| Epstein file will never be released because of the fact it has to jump to too many hoops. | ||
| And at the end, Donald Trump has veto power, so that will never happen. | ||
| The other point that I have is what you were saying about both parties are bought and sold. | ||
| That is correct. | ||
| The biggest problem that we have is whoever comes into politics and say that the rich will pay their equal share, that person will never win. | ||
| Those are my comments. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Oh, caller. | ||
| I ran for governor on an income tax on a state that has neither an income tax or a sales tax for exactly what you just said because I wanted everyone to pay their fair share. | ||
| If they had the ability to pay, they should be paying. | ||
| And what we know is I lost. | ||
| And you want to hear the irony of this? | ||
| I didn't lose because Republicans were working against me. | ||
| I lost because Democrats were. | ||
| You see, it's ironic. | ||
| We think that Republicans are anti-tax. | ||
| Well, Democrats are afraid to talk about it. | ||
| And if you're afraid to talk about it, how do you pass it? | ||
| How do you pass it? | ||
| And now look what's happening. | ||
| The only program that the MAGA Republicans like that turns out to be a government program is a program that aids and abets the rich and hurts the rest of us. | ||
| That is the reality that we are living right now. | ||
| And it is pathetic. | ||
| We have the richest economy in the world, but if it's only serving the top 5%, then you have to ask yourself the question, what is an economy for? | ||
| If it's not for us, then it's not an economy that's valued. | ||
| Joe is in Milford, Massachusetts on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Joe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| One of the things that's really, really bothering me is it seems to be the total absence of the public's concern regarding a Republican Congress. | ||
| The Constitution is very explicit on their duties and responsibilities, and I don't believe that we're seeing this whatsoever. | ||
| Their total lack of oversight on the president and his powers and the oversight of what's happening with him in the Department of Justice is just an absolute horror. | ||
| It's totally just try to imagine this whole situation with a Democratic president with the House and Senate under Republican control. | ||
| They would have impeached him no less than six months ago for sure. | ||
| So what we have is this dereliction of duty capitulation of their responsibilities to President Trump. | ||
| It's scandalous and it shouldn't be allowed. | ||
| Where is Jordan? | ||
| Where is Mr. Colmer? | ||
| They're nowhere to be found. | ||
| Same as the whole Republican Party. | ||
| So they've certainly lost any consideration of my vote. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| You know, we're about to celebrate the 250th anniversary of this country. | ||
| I would love to go back and pull all our forefathers and have them sit down and watch what's happening right now. | ||
| They would be horrified. | ||
| They'd be horrified. | ||
| They believed in checks and balances. | ||
| The word is checks. | ||
| And here's the problem. | ||
| So you've ever heard of this expression of prosecutorial discretion? | ||
| So that means someone could break a law, but the prosecutor has to decide, do I go forward? | ||
| Do I not? | ||
| It's not that he doesn't have the power to make the decision. | ||
| It's that sometimes he picks and chooses. | ||
| Well, sadly, that's also true of Speaker Johnson. | ||
| Speaker Johnson knows exactly where the power is, what the intent was, that Congress was supposed to be a check. | ||
| But he is the Speaker of the House, and he decides yes or no. | ||
| And in this case, all he has chosen to do is rubber stamp the government of Donald Trump. | ||
| Anything Trump wants, he delivers. | ||
| Do I have a vote? | ||
| Trump says no, you don't have a vote. | ||
| So unfortunately, he has a pawn of the president. | ||
| He is not a speaker of the House. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Next up is Skip in Ontonagon, Michigan on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Skip. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You were digging my call. | |
| Ma'am, you said at the start, instead of talking about the past with the shutdown, let's look at... | ||
| If I could just pause you for a moment, could I get you to turn down the volume on your TV, and then please go ahead. | ||
| You can go ahead, Skip. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, but I was asking you about looking ahead. | |
| You were talking about the seven or eight Democrats that voted open the government after Schumer and the Democrats shut it down. | ||
| My question for you, when you talk about all the things you want, you want more of this, more of that, blame Trump, blame Mike Johnson, blame them all, those darn Republicans. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| That's why I'm not a Democrat anymore, and I was for 30 years. | ||
| Because somewhere along the line, ma'am, somewhere, somebody's got to pay for all this free stuff, and you're $15, $20 an hour raise for the minimum workers. | ||
| Where do you think that money is going to come from? | ||
| We're going to have to pay $10 for a burger. | ||
| I just wish some common sense would go back to the Democrats and stop blaming. | ||
| Blame the Republicans. | ||
| Blame Trump. | ||
| Why don't you come up with some solutions? | ||
| And in the solutions, ma'am, all I'm asking for is who's going to pay for it? | ||
| It's not the people that aren't working. | ||
| I'm so aware of the money issue. | ||
| You're absolutely right. | ||
| So why did you reduce the corporate tax rate to something the corporations weren't even asking for? | ||
| They lowered it to a level that was shocked even to the corporations. | ||
| Why are you lowering the taxes on billionaires and soon to be a trillionaire? | ||
| What about Republicans in Congress? | ||
| Republicans in Congress, they have chosen to do nothing. | ||
| They have chosen, they will continue to erode the revenue stream going into this government. | ||
| And he was complaining about raising the minimum wage to $15. | ||
| Well, here's the problem with the minimum wage. | ||
| If you don't raise the minimum wage, then people need food stamps. | ||
| If you don't raise the minimum wage, then people need Medicaid. | ||
| If you don't raise the minimum wage, then people need Section 8 housing. | ||
| And that's what? | ||
| That's government programs. | ||
| That's our revenue dollars. | ||
| But if you raise the wage so people can pay for their own housing, pay for their own food, and pay for their own health care, then guess what? | ||
| We have saved money and you won't be taxed as much. | ||
| So in the end, you have to look at what's going in and what's going out. | ||
| And unfortunately, what we have done over and over again is cut revenue. | ||
| And that has been something that the Republicans have chosen to do. | ||
| And not only have they chosen to do that, they've cut revenue, but then they cut programs. | ||
| And when you cut programs on Medicaid or SNAP or whatever you do, you do a shift and shaft. | ||
| Because if the federal government using all the revenue of the 50 states doesn't contribute, and then you send the responsibility back to the states, then guess what happens? | ||
| Your local taxes go up or people are in greater need in your state. | ||
| And that is going to hurt the red states more than the blue states because they depend more on federal dollars than the blue states. | ||
| So this isn't solved when government cuts programs. | ||
| This ultimately means a shift and shaft back onto governors. | ||
| Brian is in Albuquerque, New Mexico on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Brian. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| Let's get back to affordability for average people in America and then how illegal immigration affects it. | ||
| You know, the Democrats need to get back to Econ 101 and think about supply and demand. | ||
| You know, when Bill Clinton, the man who sowed the seeds for this best friend, started signing all the Republican legislation and went along with free trade and globalization, essentially he devalued the American worker. | ||
| Because in the world economy, an average American with an eighth grade level of education isn't worth very much. | ||
| But he thought it was a good idea to open it all up. | ||
| And then on top of that, we let millions and millions and millions of people pour into the country, unregulated, basically. | ||
| And then, oh, just let them work. | ||
| Let them work. | ||
| Don't do jobs Americans won't do. | ||
| Well, that's a false. | ||
| That's not true. | ||
| You know, I remember, I'm an old guy, back in the 70s, that there was a meat packers union. | ||
| A lot of the meatpacking plants were unionized. | ||
| There was everyday Americans working there. | ||
| So what happened? | ||
| The government let the unions get broken. | ||
| The plants were closed down. | ||
| Then they were resold, magically reopened, and then millions of people flooded into the country. | ||
| So now all the meatpacking plants are basically the province of illegal immigrants. | ||
| And everybody is like, well, Americans don't want to do that job. | ||
| That's not true. | ||
| When I worked in the Chicagoland area as an electrician, I saw many, many, many, many businesses. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I've come to the opinion that the last thing an American employer wants to do is hire an American citizen. | |
| They want the illegal immigrant because they make more money off of them. | ||
| And when Democrats just play along with it and ignore the problem of illegal immigration, they're making it worse for the average American worker. | ||
| So Brian, let's let Anna respond to some of your points that you've raised. | ||
| No, there's a part of me that totally agrees with what you just said. | ||
| Okay, so let me just start with that. | ||
| The problem is that the reason why we have so many undocumented immigrants is that we don't even have a path to get here. | ||
| All right, so let's understand that we haven't addressed the immigration problem for how many decades? | ||
| So part of the problem is if you don't have a rational system, then what you've done is you've opened the floodgates to the undocumented. | ||
| Number one. | ||
| Number two, we have an aging demographic. | ||
| I don't know about you, but I don't know a lot of young people or people in their 50s who want to go into a lettuce field and pick lettuce or want to go on a roof and repair a roof or want to work in a nursing home. | ||
| So our demographics work against us. | ||
| The fact that we haven't actually addressed the immigration policy in this country addresses us. | ||
| And also because we're busting unions. | ||
| And that's another problem. | ||
| And who's been busting the unions? | ||
| But it turns out that Republicans have been busting the unions. | ||
| So if you want to protect workers, then you better protect unions because unions are the only ones that can come to the table with the boss and make sure things are on a level playing field. | ||
| Do a lot of people want to work in an agricultural community? | ||
| Probably not. | ||
| And it's not just because of the wages they get paid. | ||
| It's because of the hours. | ||
| It's because of now with the climate crisis, oh my God, I don't know how any human being can actually work in agriculture and it's only going to get worse. | ||
| Do we have to fix the system? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| But do we need the undocumented immigrants that are here right now? | ||
| Yes, we do. | ||
| Yes, we do. | ||
| Now figure out how to make them legal, figure out how to protect them, raise the wages, and make them a contributing member of society, which they already are. | ||
| They contribute with no benefit. | ||
| No benefit. | ||
| They can't collect welfare. | ||
| They can't collect Section 8, but they send billions of dollars in money into the federal coffers, whether it's Social Security or taxes. | ||
| They're not takers. | ||
| They're givers. | ||
| Let's hear now from Barbara in Rossville, Georgia on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Barbara. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All I want to say is thank God for people like you. | |
| You're the best one that I've heard so far on C-SPAN, and I'm grateful to even be listening to you. | ||
| I read where Donald Trump throwed a Halloween party, and he $3.4 million that it took to throw that party. | ||
| And the people on SNAP was doing without their food and everything. | ||
| And I wanted to ask you, who do you think would be the best person to run for president? | ||
| And how do, and where did the money go when I heard that Trump had taken so much money out of Medicare and Medicaid? | ||
| I would like to know where the money went. | ||
| And then he fired all these people and he added the tariffs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It looks like we should have plenty of money to pay on the deficit. | |
| But as far as I know, we hadn't paid a dime on the deficit. | ||
| But he's bought golf courses and opened up his new golf course that he had and everything. | ||
| We really need, the Democrats really need somebody really, really good. | ||
| How about you running for president? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So first of all, remember what I said about the election on Tuesday? | ||
| The election on last, what is it, a couple weeks ago now, was done on an election of Democrats. | ||
| It was an election of us. | ||
| It was a no-kings election. | ||
| We spoke. | ||
| And we spoke in huge numbers. | ||
| And we basically said, this is what we want. | ||
| We want someone who will lead. | ||
| You're asking me about who should run for president? | ||
| I have no clue. | ||
| I have no clue. | ||
| And remember, I'm from New Hampshire. | ||
| What have we been doing my entire political life? | ||
| We've been picking presidential candidates because we have the first in the nation presidential primary. | ||
| Well, I'll be honest with you, I don't know yet, but I may know as we begin to see the whole situation evolve and we speak. | ||
| As we speak, a leader will emerge. | ||
| I don't want someone from the top figuring out what to do because so far as far as I can tell, the top is pretty thin and doesn't have a spine. | ||
| What I'm hoping is we find our spine, we find our voice, and we start defining not only what we want out of government, but the policies we need to hear. | ||
| And more often than not, too many of my leaders use generic headlines. | ||
| Oh, I believe in affordability. | ||
| I want you to have access to health care. | ||
| Really, show me the policy, honey. | ||
| I want to know what it actually looks like. | ||
| And that's one of the things that I have to actually compliment Zorin Mandani. | ||
| Zorin Mandani didn't just talk about affordability. | ||
| That's a very easy term to sue. | ||
| He then said, what are you hurting? | ||
| You're hurting because the cost of daycare in my state, if you are a family of four in the state of New Hampshire and you have to access daycare, do you know what daycare will cost you until your kids are outside the daycare frame? | ||
| It'll cost you $300,000. | ||
| Let me repeat that. | ||
| That's $300,000 that you have to spend to go to work. | ||
| To go to work. | ||
| That is unaffordable. | ||
| That is unconscionable. | ||
| So as we look for a candidate, what I need to hear are what are the policies? | ||
| What are the changes? | ||
| Where are you going to go? | ||
| Are you hearing us? | ||
| And are you responding to us? | ||
| So let's get to one more caller. | ||
| Judy is in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Judy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, good morning. | |
| First, I'll start out by saying for many years, maybe 15, I've listened to C-SPAN every morning. | ||
| I love to hear what people say when they call in. | ||
| I'm dressed and ready to go to church. | ||
| Mass starts in about an hour. | ||
| And I'm listening to a woman who speaks hatred to the point where she sees no good in anyone but what she thinks. | ||
| I have friends who vote Democratic. | ||
| They're still my friends. | ||
| I don't judge them, and I certainly don't spew hatred towards them or anyone who votes like them. | ||
| So I'm just saying, Arnie Arneston is just a very hateful woman, and I feel sorry for her in so very many ways. | ||
| May you both have a blessed day. | ||
| One of the reasons I wanted to come on at 8 o'clock was that I knew I'd catch you before church. | ||
| All right? | ||
| No, I'm kind of serious about that. | ||
| And what you need to know, caller, is that my second husband was a Republican libertarian atheist who never voted for me. | ||
| I loved him. | ||
| I buried him. | ||
| He died of cancer. | ||
| He was the most important person in my life. | ||
| I don't look at party labels. | ||
| I look at actions. | ||
| And when I see the actions are so cruel, and when I see the actions choose not to address the needs of the hungry, of the sick, when I see people ignore the science, want to undermine public education. | ||
| I'm not saying that I hate the person, but their actions are something I despise. | ||
| I remember saying to my dad, my dad was very conservative, Republican. | ||
| And at the end of his life, I looked at him and I said, there's something you need to know, Papa. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I love you, but I'm not sure I like you anymore. | |
| No, this isn't about hating people. | ||
| I am just so sad as to where we are today. | ||
| And that's actually where we're going to have to end it today. | ||
| Thank you, Arnie Arneson, who is the host of the attitude with Arnie Arneson on Pacifica Network. | ||
| I appreciate your time this morning. | ||
| Thank you for giving me the time. | ||
| Later on our program, we're going to be taking more of your calls and comments in open forum. | ||
| But first, coming up next on Washington Journal, the Washington Examiners, Peter Laughan, will join us to discuss the government shutdown, campaign 2026, political extremism, the Epstein files, and other news of the day. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This week on the C-SPAN Networks, after the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, the House and Senate are back in session. | |
| The House will vote on legislation for the Justice Department to release all of the files in its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. | ||
| The Senate will continue work on 2026 federal spending legislation, including a full year of funding for the defense and health and human services departments. | ||
| On Tuesday, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, Philip Swagel, will testify before the House Budget Committee, conducting oversight on his agency. | ||
| And on Wednesday, a Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Subcommittee hearing on the effects of the government shutdown on the aviation system. | ||
| Watch live this week on the C-SPAN networks or on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app. | ||
| Also, head over to C-SPAN.org for scheduling information or to watch live or on demand anytime. | ||
| c-span democracy unfiltered watch america's book club c-span's bold original series Today, best-selling biographer Walter Isaacson, who chronicles history's most remarkable lives. | ||
| His books include Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs, and Einstein. | ||
| He joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein. | ||
| What attracted you to these people? | ||
| Was it because they were geniuses or you just happened to like them? | ||
| Smart people are a dime a dozen. | ||
| In order to be a genius, you have to be creative. | ||
| You have to think out of the box. | ||
| And one of the things that struck me when I wrote about Benjamin Franklin early on was what a great scientist and technologist he was. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Watch America's Book Club with Walter Isaacson today at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | |
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We're joined now by Peter Lathan, who's the deputy editor of commentary at the Washington Examiner, as well as the In Focus editor. | ||
| Thanks so much for joining us on Washington Journal. | ||
| Well, thanks so much for having me. | ||
| So we've been talking about the impact of the shutdown all morning. | ||
| What do you think of the way that it resolved and whether or not it's going to make a difference in the upcoming midterms? | ||
| So I actually don't think it's going to make much difference at all in the upcoming midterms. | ||
| And I don't think there were particularly any winners in the shutdown. | ||
| And I think that's something that may be different from shutdowns in the past. | ||
| This seems to have been truly a Seinfeld shutdown, just totally pointless. | ||
| There may have been a couple of losers, but it's hard to say that there was a winner. | ||
| I guess you could say Republicans essentially got what they wanted. | ||
| But in the process, with the government shutdown and with them in charge, they gave the impression, or there was the impression, that there was a great dysfunction in Washington, and that never helps the party in power. | ||
| And when it comes to the Democrats, well, the one big loser of this whole thing is almost certainly Chuck Schumer. | ||
| Chuck Schumer has been getting lambasted by his own party for failing to keep his caucus together. | ||
| But it's hard to say exactly how this could have been resolved in any other way. | ||
| This seems to have been sort of a preordained conclusion. | ||
| They were never going to get what they were after, which was an extension of the Affordable Care Act credits that were signed during COVID and were set to expire at the end of this year. | ||
| And they never really had any leverage to get that done. | ||
| And so it seems the Democrats went into this because they wanted to give the impression that we're fighting Trump. | ||
| That's the impression they want to give their voters right now. | ||
| And it doesn't seem that they had a real strategy to come out on top of this. | ||
| And so you see, you know, Schumer getting trashed, but he may deserve it because he went along with this, with his party's base the whole way. | ||
| And then he couldn't keep his caucus in line in the end. | ||
| And he seems to be the one who's going to take the fall. | ||
| But were there any winners? | ||
| No, I think we're going to forget about this one really quick. | ||
| I think this was a long shutdown. | ||
| There was real pain that was inflicted, particularly in Northern Virginia. | ||
| And so, you know, with all the federal workers who were laid off or not getting paid. | ||
| And I think that helped Abigail Spanberger win her Virginia race, her race for governor of Virginia. | ||
| But beyond that, I think we're going to forget about this story pretty quick. | ||
| You mentioned, you know, sort of the fight over health care that was central, or at least these ACA subsidies, that was pretty central to the shutdown debate. | ||
| And there is a KFF health tracking poll that public support remains quite high for extending those enhanced ACA credit. | ||
| What danger do you think, if any at all, this issue poses to Republicans moving forward? | ||
| Oh, well, it poses a danger in the sense that they need to come up with a real replacement for Obamacare. | ||
| Yeah, you're going to see things, you're going to see polls like KFF, you know, people, they want this tax credit extended. | ||
| But I think the reason that Democrats couldn't use that as leverage here in the shutdown is because there's behind it the tacit admission that Obamacare is failing, which in a way, the exact way Republicans always said that Obamacare would fail. | ||
| That we can't simply continue to spend this much money propping up a system that doesn't work in the long run. | ||
| Right now, we're $38 trillion in debt. | ||
| And that's real money. | ||
| That's not pretend money. | ||
| $38 trillion. | ||
| I know when we get to numbers like that, it's hard to even conceptualize just how deeply indebted we are. | ||
| And most of that debt, if not, you know, the large, large majority, 90% plus, comes from these social spending programs. | ||
| And so we're going to hit a real wall here at some time. | ||
| And it comes to the point where are we going to learn the lesson of how terrible it is what we're doing to our future after it happens or before it happens? | ||
| And so there was never it's hard to say that just because people wanted this particular tax credit extended, that created real political leverage. | ||
| Because, yeah, it sort of admits that the policy itself just isn't working. | ||
| I want to talk about some of your recent writings, including on political extremism, both on the political right and left. | ||
| You have a recent piece, Cheney, Pelosi, and Mamdani, the American saga continues. | ||
| Can you talk about sort of what your thoughts are regarding political extremism, including white and Christian supremacy as well as anti-Semitism? | ||
| Oh, sure. | ||
| So there's a lot there. | ||
| Certainly we're seeing now a rise of extremism on both sides that's very concerning. | ||
| It's been going on a bit longer on the left, and it seems as though the more extreme elements of the left have effectively become the mainstream of their party. | ||
| And I think we saw that with Zorhan Mamdani's victory in New York City. | ||
| On the right, for me, it's particularly concerning as a conservative to see some of the attitudes and behaviors and thoughts that have been percolating up into what we call the new right mainstream. | ||
| So one of the problems with calling people Nazis for the past decade, which is what we've been doing, we've just been, every time somebody does something we don't like, we say, you're a Nazi, is that we have this sort of linguistic inflation and we lose our ability to communicate when real danger is coming. | ||
| And there are real Nazis, people who, you know, if they're not wearing Nazi uniforms, they sure do share Nazi ideas and have their ambition to take over the conservative movement and the country. | ||
| There was an incident a couple weeks ago that got this whole firestorm started. | ||
| There's this young man named Nick Fuentes on the far right. | ||
| I'm not sure how many in your audience would be familiar with him. | ||
| I hope they're not, frankly. | ||
| He is a truly despicable person who has said, you know, and believes, stands by some of the worst ideas imaginable. | ||
| A true racist and a proud one. | ||
| A true anti-Semite and a proud one. | ||
| And he has legions of followers online. | ||
| I think I saw the other day he may have the top podcast on Spotify. | ||
| And so normally, in normal times, the Republican Party would keep people like that away. | ||
| No, you can't come into our center circle here. | ||
| You're not on our team. | ||
| Even though we're principally, we're fighting against the left. | ||
| You extremist people, you're not with us. | ||
| But then, a couple weeks ago, Tucker Carlson, who is probably the most influential and powerful media figure on the right, invited this Fuentes character onto his show and had a two-hour interview with him that was downright friendly, where none of his ideas were challenged. | ||
| At times, he used phrases like, yes, we have to defeat organized Jewry. | ||
| And Tucker Carlson sat there with a straight face and didn't say anything or nodded along. | ||
| And so for a figure like that to be brought into the mainstream, it was very disconcerting. | ||
| And there was a blowback to that. | ||
| But then again, then two days later, the Heritage Foundation, the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, came out and made this video defending Tucker Carlson's decision to have this young man on his show and accused anybody who is against platforming this young man as being part of a venomous coalition. | ||
| Now the Heritage Foundation is an enormously influential organization within the conservative movement, enormously. | ||
| In fact, it's been, I'd say, the power center of conservative thought for the past decade, really since Trump came on the scene, and has a long, you know, storied history. | ||
| And so to see the president of that organization come on and say that was incredibly troubling. | ||
| Now, he has walked that back in the last couple of weeks. | ||
| Roberts has, and has reaffirmed his commitment to anti-Semitism. | ||
| But the whole episode left conservatives, and I'll say me too, pretty shaken. | ||
| And then, you know, another element of this, an elephant in the room that needs to be discussed, JD Vance's reactions to this whole spat over the past few weeks is also something that many in the more traditional right, and I consider myself in that camp, found very troubling. | ||
| Yes, I see a headline on one of your pieces, Vance's silence on the heritage Fuentes Fiasco, hands 2028 rivals an opening. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah, he came out and said he was disappointed that there was so much infighting going on within the conservative movement. | ||
| Now, when you use the word infighting, that word itself sort of implies that the people who are fighting are on the same team. | ||
| I infight with my teammates and that we should stop infighting and look at the real enemy on the left. | ||
| That was essentially what he said. | ||
| And many on the conservative movement, myself included, said, no, whoa, wait a minute. | ||
| I'm not infighting with people on my team. | ||
| They're not on my team. | ||
| I'm not on their team. | ||
| I don't want them in our camp. | ||
| Senator Cruz, if you'll allow me a moment, was one of the people who gave a statement like that saying a comment, if you sit there with someone who says Adolf Hitler was very, very cool and that their mission is to combat and defeat global jewelry, and you say nothing, then you are a coward and you are complicit in that evil. | ||
| Yeah, and that seemed to be a direct shot at the vice president. | ||
| And we're seeing on the right, and Cruz would also be included in this more traditionalist camp, that the old guard, they're referred to sometimes, their spines are stiffened by this whole thing. | ||
| All of a sudden, there's a real concerted effort to keep the Vance wing of the party from ascending. | ||
| Now, that's interesting in terms of 2028 because JD Vance, obviously, is a runaway favorite to become the next party's nominee. | ||
| He's up 30, 40 points in most polls that come out. | ||
| And early polling, who knows? | ||
| But it's a very strong position. | ||
| Trump's magic in the Republican Party for the past decade is that he's been able to hold these two factions together. | ||
| This sort of new right, populist, protectionist, isolationist wing that Vance is probably a bit more comfortable in. | ||
| And people like Tucker Carlson and Kevin Roberts kind of hail from. | ||
| But also the more traditional conservatives, the Cruises, the people who are maybe a bit more eager to use military intervention to solve problems around the world. | ||
| Trump ended up commanding loyalty and respect from both sides, which is an incredible achievement. | ||
| And it's why he's had such incredible power and such a hold on the Republican Party over the past decade. | ||
| This whole episode shows that it's pretty clear Vance doesn't have both camps here. | ||
| He's not going to be able to hold them as automatically as Trump did. | ||
| And so that does open the door to a challenge. | ||
| Now, the other day, I was at a Buckley Institute conference. | ||
| The Buckley Institute, William F. Buckley, founded the National Review. | ||
| And I have to tell you, from that crowd, which is comprised of mainly the old guard, there was a lot of talk of, hey, we need to put up a challenger to this. | ||
| And so it's interesting. | ||
| It looked like the nomination fight in 2028 for Vance was going to be a cakewalk, but he's still very clearly the favorite. | ||
| And I'm interested to see when he does weigh in on all of this, how he attempts to do that. | ||
| But certainly his position is more tenuous than it was a few weeks ago. | ||
| You mentioned that there does seem to be this division within the Republican Party over issues similar to this. | ||
| Back in September, Missouri GOP Senator Eric Schmidt spoke at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington and delivered a speech titled, What is an American? | ||
| And he was critical of multiculturalism and immigration. | ||
| Let's listen and I'd like to get your response. | ||
| For decades, the mainstream consensus on the left and the right alike seemed to be that America itself was just an idea, a vehicle for global liberalism. | ||
| We were told that the entire meaning of America boiled down to a few lines in a poem on the Statue of Liberty and five words about equality in the Declaration of Independence. | ||
| Any other aspect of American identity was deemed to be illegitimate and immoral, poisoned by the evils of our ancestors. | ||
| The true meaning of America, they said, was liberalism, multiculturalism, endless immigration. | ||
| In a speech in 1998, Bill Clinton said that the continuous influx of immigrants was, and I quote, a reminder that our America is not so much a place but a promise. | ||
| Let me just say, I believe our founding fathers were the most brilliant group of men ever assembled in any one place at any one time, in any room. | ||
| Their ideas are central to who we are. | ||
| You can't understand America without understanding things like freedom of speech, the right to self-defense, the ideals of independence, self-government, and political liberty. | ||
| But these principles aren't merely abstractions. | ||
| They're living, breathing things rooted in a people and embodied in a way of life. | ||
| It's only in that context do they become real. | ||
| Peter, your thoughts on that? | ||
| So I think that he makes a lot of important points. | ||
| I don't dislike that comment necessarily, those comments necessarily. | ||
| America is an idea and it is also a particular place made up of a particular people. | ||
| And that's just the truth. | ||
| We have a history and we have a culture. | ||
| And on the left, for the past decade or more, there has been great effort to make it seem as though America is nothing but an idea, a purely propositional nation. | ||
| And that's not quite right either, because obviously we do at this point, 250 years into our existence, have a lineage. | ||
| We are a people. | ||
| We are also a people who pride ourselves on taking in people who need to come here because of our vast wealth and power. | ||
| So there is tension here. | ||
| I fear that this particular point, this particular point of the debate is very polarized. | ||
| And so you have people on the right, and I think Eric Schmidt, you could say he's among them, who want America to only be a people and a particular place at a particular time and not its propositional nature, not a creedal nation built on creeds. | ||
| And if that's your position, you're coming into close proximity with some forces, some ideas that are not only politically toxic, but very morally problematic. | ||
| And I think we've seen that on the right in the past few weeks, that when you move in that direction, it can empower some people who really want to hear that message and use it for bad reasons. | ||
| Fuentes, chief among them. | ||
| Now, the problem on the left is similar. | ||
| They want America to only be an ideal and to completely ignore the culture that is here, the culture that it was built on, the values that America has been built on, the Judeo-Christian values America has most definitely been built on, and replace it with whatever comes next. | ||
| And that's also very troubling, and that's an idea that I've been fighting against for a long time now. | ||
| So there's great tension in this particular argument, and I think we're going to see it play out over the next few years. | ||
| What is an American? | ||
| We've seen a lot of right-wing influencers pose that question online, seemingly as if they just want to get us thinking. | ||
| Now, I think an American is somebody who is a citizen of America. | ||
| We're not going to, there is some energy on the right to do things like deport leftists. | ||
| This is in the far right. | ||
| Deport anybody who calls themselves a Muslim. | ||
| And that is obviously, that's a terrible idea that I would never go along with. | ||
| There's problems on both sides of this issue, and I think we're going to see it play out over the next few years. | ||
| All right, we're taking calls for Peter Laffin, and let's start with Thomas in Derwood, Maryland, on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Thomas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I have a question for the guy for the Examiner. | ||
| We know that the Examiner is definitely a right-wing newspaper or company. | ||
| Let me ask you this. | ||
| When you say the founding fathers, I mean, they massacred the Indians, forced them to live their land. | ||
| Okay, that's one of their, I guess, legacies. | ||
| They kept black people in slavery. | ||
| They didn't want women to vote. | ||
| Then they said some men were three-fifths of a man. | ||
| So I like to know when you speak about the right wing and William F. Buckley and people like that, and they believed in having the Nazis here because if you remember, after the war, they let the Nazis come into this country. | ||
| Full-fledged, car-turned Nazis. | ||
| So why should we be surprised that the Republicans have a nationalist movement, Christian nationalist, they call it, but how can they be called a Christian nationalist when they let Nazis in the country that merge Jewish people and came here with the same beliefs and thoughts and spread it out amongst the lands? | ||
| Even if you go back to Charlottesville, what did they say? | ||
| So Thomas, let's let Peter respond to some of these points that you've raised. | ||
| Well, a lot there. | ||
| One general response I'd give to this caller is there's a lot of speaking about an enormously varied and large group of people using the word they. | ||
| And that's a terrible habit that we get in our politics. | ||
| On the other side, they're just the big they. | ||
| He started talking about the founders and that they all did terrible things. | ||
| And there was a great amount of, There's a great amount of diversity of thought in the founders about things like slavery, about things like expanding westward. | ||
| And if we get up to the time of, you know, is Lincoln a they? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| If he is a they, he was a bad they because he freed the slaves, the Emancipation Proclamation, and fought the Civil War for it. | ||
| Was Grant a they? | ||
| One of the bad guys? | ||
| You know, he fought against members of his own family in the Civil War to make sure that black people could be free eventually. | ||
| So it seems that in this caller's mind, and I think in the mind of a lot of Americans, there is this larger enemy on the other side who's this spooky, terrible force, and it's all the people who aren't like me, and they are evil. | ||
| So it would be hard to answer all the callers' comments, all of his questions in this moment, because he raised a lot of things. | ||
| But I would say that's the thing we need to avoid right now if we want to get to a better place. | ||
| There are people on the right and on the left who are good, decent people who are attempting to find a way to live together in this country. | ||
| I'm about to go to church and sit next to a bunch of them on both sides. | ||
| Many people are going to the grocery store today, and I promise they are going to be all around you. | ||
| And so to try to avoid these huge generalizations, I think, is a way toward a better politics that won't end in a disaster. | ||
| Martin is in Smithtown, New York, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Martin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Peter. | |
| I'd like to ask three questions, but please answer them after I answer them. | ||
| The first thing is with the Epstein and Trump, my President Trump. | ||
| The first thing that Trump is not gullible, and he's pretty smart, I think he took a staff and said, AI, I want you to go through the 23,000 papers and come up with a conclusion. | ||
| And for sure, Trump has the answer. | ||
| I don't think he wants to disgrace our nation or disgrace our country internationally. | ||
| My question to you is, when Biden ran this country for four years, when he had control of both houses, why didn't he do something about it? | ||
| Why are they dumping now on Trump? | ||
| My second point is stopping the nation for 40 days. | ||
| What did the Democrats actually accomplish? | ||
| And the answer is absolutely nothing. | ||
| What they did do, they did screw the people that have food stamps. | ||
| They screwed the people that had a fly, the federal government workers who got terminated. | ||
| My question to you, and also from day one, the Republicans and Democrats could find a solution for Obamacare. | ||
| And my question to you again, what for the four years that Biden do, why didn't he do anything and why did he dump on Trump? | ||
| Now, the most important third thing that I have to say is this country votes for a president. | ||
| 80 million people voted for Trump. | ||
| Why do we have federal judges who are not even elected, appointed, running our country? | ||
| They don't know the first thing about tariffs. | ||
| If they do to banks, their own bank accounts, it would be great. | ||
| Why are they getting involved with states such as the Prime Minister? | ||
| So, Martin, I think we understand your three questions. | ||
| I want to give Peter a chance to respond. | ||
| I believe your first question was about why the Epstein files are potentially coming out now. | ||
| Secondly, what was accomplished by the shutdown, if anything. | ||
| And then, third, addressing, I believe Martin was referencing the tariff case before the Supreme Court. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So, we'll start with Epstein. | ||
| If you want to be cynical about American politics, pay close attention to the Epstein story. | ||
| Both sides on this issue have been so awful and cynical and opportunist over the 15 or 20 years this has been going on that I almost, I don't feel bad for anybody really caught in the crossfire of this. | ||
| If you remember going back, you know, for the first 10 years of this scandal, it was all about Bill Clinton's connection. | ||
| It appears, you know, rightfully so that there are a lot. | ||
| Bill Clinton spent a lot of time with this guy that we can verify. | ||
| And a number of other prominent Democrats, liberal people, I won't name them. | ||
| You probably know who they are. | ||
| And during that time of the story, Democrats and the legacy media willfully ignored it, did everything they could to make anybody who was concerned about the Epstein issue seem like they were a crazy kook, a conspiracy theorist, tinfoil hatter. | ||
| Those are the people who think the Epstein scandal will produce some list of powerful people. | ||
| And now that there's some information that Donald Trump's relationship with him, you know, is was somewhat extensive. | ||
| I'm not sure exactly what it amounted to. | ||
| But now that that's the case, suddenly the left and Democrats are the ones who are so concerned with the victims of the Epstein story. | ||
| And that is just so, it's grotesque, you know, to emotionally manipulate people like that through the media for so long that they suddenly care about the Epstein saga. | ||
| It's gagworthy. | ||
| Now, on the other side of that, the Republican Party, particularly President Donald Trump and Vice President Vance and their most famous supporters, they did everything they could in the past five years, really, and particularly during the 2024 presidential campaign, to raise this issue. | ||
| They wanted the Epstein files to come out. | ||
| And the reason is, is that Republicans online, particularly the far right, are obsessed with Jeffrey Epstein. | ||
| And so they gave them constant lip service that we're going to get to the bottom of this when we get in there. | ||
| Even after they were elected, this was going on. | ||
| JD Vance was on the Theo Vaughan podcast. | ||
| I think this was in the spring. | ||
| And he said, yeah, we really got to release that client list, you know, as if there is one. | ||
| And so both sides have used this story as a political football to try and hurt the other. | ||
| And there are real, again, real people at the center of this, people who appear to have been really hurt. | ||
| But for both major parties, it's just a political football. | ||
| And then we were talking about what was accomplished by the shutdown. | ||
| Oh, you know, as I said earlier, it doesn't seem anything was accomplished by the shutdown except Chuck Schumer probably losing his leadership in the Senate sooner than later. | ||
| Besides that, it's hard to see. | ||
| You know, Democrats didn't really have a plan. | ||
| They just wanted to give the perception that they were fighting Trump. | ||
| They had no victory plan, no exit plan, and it just kind of trickled toward the ending that everybody assumed it would. | ||
| A stalemate, and I think we're all going to move on, and Schumer is the one who's going to take the brunt of the blame. | ||
| And if you don't mind touching briefly on the tariffs case at the Supreme Court, as the caller raised. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| So, you know, whether Donald Trump can unilaterally impose these tariffs, that's going to come before the Supreme Court really soon. | ||
| Smart people I talk to think that it's going to get struck down. | ||
| And that might in the end also be a good thing for Trump. | ||
| The tariffs have been a very strange part of Trump's first year. | ||
| Trump likes to make deals. | ||
| I think essentially, why is Trump so into the tariff thing? | ||
| I think at the bottom of it is he just loves negotiating. | ||
| But does a single person have the power to do that, totally independent of Congress? | ||
| That doesn't look like that's going to be the case. | ||
| Now, that may end up being a good thing for him. | ||
| And he's somewhat admitting that this week. | ||
| There's the story this week that he's going to ease off on some of the tariffs to deal with rising food costs. | ||
| And so that seems to me like a tacit admission that, okay, tariffs raise the prices of things. | ||
| And we have promised that wasn't going to be the case. | ||
| And if that wasn't the case, why would he be lowering the tariffs now to help with prices? | ||
| So I think in the long run, these getting struck down, it might have two benefits for him. | ||
| The first benefit is that it'll probably get rid of his worst policy. | ||
| It's not a good economic policy. | ||
| And the Supreme Court may do him a favor and say that he can't have it. | ||
| And secondly, it'll give him something to be aggrieved about. | ||
| And we all know that President Donald Trump is at his best when he's against the system. | ||
| He's trying to make America great again, and the system is putting him down. | ||
| And so it may create a dynamic that's politically advantageous for him, too. | ||
| John is in Nottingham, Maryland, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Peter. | |
| I'm one of those C-SPAN callers. | ||
| I'm one of those C-SPAN callers who think I have a paradigm shattering insight, but no platform. | ||
| So I want you to hear it. | ||
| This frame. | ||
| Excellent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The cost of government spending is abstract. | |
| To the nearest number, whole number, a million dollars of federal spending costs each taxpayer a penny. | ||
| A billion costs us each $10. | ||
| A trillion costs $10,000. | ||
| What if we didn't let Congress say we have a $30 billion program? | ||
| We made them say we're going to spend $300 of your money to talk that way. | ||
| Instead of a million's a penny, a billion's $10, and a trillion's $10,000. | ||
| What if we made him talk that way? | ||
| You know, I think that would be great. | ||
| I think that getting away from euphemisms in politics and speaking bolder and clearer truths, particularly about our economic situation, particularly about our debt, would be fantastic, if that's what I'm understanding you're saying. | ||
| And so I would, I think it's a very interesting idea. | ||
| I think you should, I think you said you were in Maryland? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Pitch it to your local congressman. | ||
| Say, hey, come out and talk this way and see if it catches on. | ||
| Mary is in Orangeburg, South Carolina on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Mary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, good morning. | |
| I wanted to ask him about when he was talking about one of the persons that called in and he was using the frame as they. | ||
| Well, that they, I don't call people they, I call who they are. | ||
| And those days are evangelicals, white supremacists, Hu Kook Slams, and white nationalists. | ||
| Those are the ones that he's considering as they. | ||
| And the next thing I want to say, I was raised up in New York, 1948 to all those 2000s. | ||
| Donald Trump, everything they say about him is true. | ||
| What you want to see is the people that's involved in it, hear what they have to say. | ||
| There's documentaries. | ||
| I lived through it. | ||
| I saw it in person on news when all these things were happening. | ||
| I know what he did in Russia. | ||
| I know what he did in Scotland. | ||
| And I definitely know what he did in New York. | ||
| So if you want to know the truth about this Epstein stuff, go to documentaries. | ||
| It's all out there. | ||
| And you can Google it. | ||
| It's all out there. | ||
| Not everything. | ||
| The videos are not out there. | ||
| See, people don't realize Epstein had videos in every room, including the bathroom. | ||
| And that's why even the Prince talked to him so much and try to get some of them videos back. | ||
| So it's a lot going on. | ||
| Donald Trump is a pedophile. | ||
| So I'll let Peter respond to some of these points that you've raised, Mary. | ||
| Okay, so Mary, I would say, you know, you may have said a couple of things that I agree with, but you lost me in the first sentence when you said that the problem and that they're all the same and that they're all bad. | ||
| I think you said evangelicals plus Nazis plus white supremacists. | ||
| Again, that's a very large group of people. | ||
| Evangelical Christians are a very large block of this country. | ||
| And if you think they're all white supremacists or Nazis, you're part of the problem with the polarization and really the lack of respect and thinking in this country, the lack of thoughtfulness. | ||
| My father is an evangelical. | ||
| So when you lump that word next to Nazi and say those are all the bad people, that's a pretty big they. | ||
| And it's not only inaccurate, I'd say that's really immoral. | ||
| And so you may want to rethink that categorization block that you just put together. | ||
| The rest of it, some other things, I think you said that Donald Trump did something in Russia. | ||
| You know, maybe, I don't know, but certainly not what the Democrats would have had you believe in the past decade. | ||
| The Russia Gate conspiracy theories have been almost universally debunked. | ||
| And many of the mainstream news outlets you probably get your news from have walked back their earlier stances on that considerably. | ||
| That includes the New York Times and the Washington Post, by the way. | ||
| And so I'd go and I'd take a look at that, see if your ideas about Trump and Russia still hold up. | ||
| And as for the rest of it, is he a pedophile? | ||
| You know, you seem to have all of the proof in the world. | ||
| So, you know, I'd say you should go out there and write an article, put it out, and convince us all. | ||
| And we'll believe you if you really have the proof. | ||
| Tom is in Trenton, New Jersey on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Tom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I love the show. | ||
| I just had a few points to make. | ||
| The Obama care on that, it was a terrible, it was meant to be, you know, it was terrible. | ||
| So they won't admit that it was terrible. | ||
| And my second point is on the terrorists. | ||
| I don't know why we owe everybody everything. | ||
| Our jobs are getting lost and how anybody could be against that. | ||
| It doesn't seem fair to me. | ||
| And then the third point is, for years, everybody I know, Republicans and Democrats agreed that the government needs to be downside. | ||
| We can't sustain all this crazy spending. | ||
| That are just a few of my points. | ||
| And the last final thing is, if Donald Trump does do something good, the Democrats will vote it down. | ||
| There's no bipartisanship, and that goes for the Republicans, too. | ||
| So Americans are tired of the fighting and like the Epstein files. | ||
| People don't, me personally, I don't care about it. | ||
| I care about what's going to make the lives for Americans better. | ||
| That will not. | ||
| So they're my points, and I love watching the show, and I watch it every day. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So Tom, they're raising his opinion that the Obamacare is a universal failure, that people should be in support of President Trump's tariffs, the need for smaller government, as well as the opposition that the president is facing from Democrats. | ||
| Oh, to respond to your first point, yeah, I think clearly, as I said earlier, Obamacare has been a failure and a bad one. | ||
| And that's the reason we're seeing our health care premiums skyrocket. | ||
| And the fact that Democrats were holding on to this extension of tax credits for Obamacare for an extension that was made during the COVID emergency is proof that that program just doesn't work and needs to be replaced with something better. | ||
| So I'd agree with you there completely. | ||
| On the second point about the tariffs, I'm going to disagree with you here. | ||
| And that's because our consumer products, the prices of food, the prices of almost everything, with a few exceptions, are still too high. | ||
| And Donald Trump was elected in 2024 primarily, and this is according to polls, primarily by voters who wanted him and trusted him to bring down the cost of living. | ||
| And he's been focused on a lot of other things in his first year. | ||
| I know some people have said, well, he's had a very foreign policy focused term here. | ||
| He's remaking the White House, which I don't really have a problem with. | ||
| But I think there is a perception problem with what are you doing to lower the cost of the stuff I buy? | ||
| And here you are obsessed with making a ballroom. | ||
| I think that's a political problem. | ||
| And so, and I don't believe that the tariff policy, while it's been maybe an interesting negotiating policy in terms of foreign policy, other things like that, it has not delivered on reducing the cost of living. | ||
| And that's a real problem for the president. | ||
| It's going to be a real problem in the midterms. | ||
| I think I saw Vice President Vance on one of the Sunday morning shows last week, you know, saying, well, it's going to take a long time for all of everything that Biden messed up to be done away with. | ||
| It takes a lot of time for the tariff policy to be enacted and for us to see the fruits of it. | ||
| And I thought to myself, man, that sounds a lot like the Biden people saying that inflation was transitory. | ||
| And we're a year into this and we're not seeing any results. | ||
| And, you know, so I think that's going to be a major problem. | ||
| And as I said earlier, I think the Supreme Court shutting down the tariffs would be a real favor to the president. | ||
| Alexander is in Brooklyn, New York on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Alexander. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hello. | |
| Good morning, and thank you for taking my call. | ||
| You know, I'm hearing you as a conservative, and I saw you're almost bent backwards in trying to explain the difference between what is, I would say, the spirit of this country and the people that live in this country. | ||
| It just makes it seem as if you want to say that we have a history here, but you want to deny what that history is, and you say that we have a culture and that we have a people. | ||
| And somewhere along the history of this country, you close that door and you just say, this is what we are. | ||
| This is who we are. | ||
| And you say that you are a person of faith. | ||
| And yet, what you are just explaining is a president that has taken conservative values, conservative philosophy, and we are watching it in display. | ||
| There is nothing normal about a president unilaterally putting tariffs out there, putting people's lives and businesses at risk, destroying economies. | ||
| There is nothing normal about a person saying that the vermin and the blood of the vermin come into this country, eating animals, and making people feel as if they are less than human. | ||
| Why are you surprised that Nick Fuentes on a interview with Tucker Carlson, who was from Fox News, that feeds this hatred is a result that you get from what we have of the conservative movement and the conservative part of the political spectrum. | ||
| Can I respond here? | ||
| Can I ask him a question? | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Can I ask him a question? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| How many non-criminals did Barack Obama deport? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Barack Obama deported more immigrants in his first term than Trump did. | |
| More. | ||
| And you know that. | ||
| In his presidency, quite a bit more. | ||
| How many of them were non-criminals? | ||
|
unidentified
|
And so what I tell you is this. | |
| This is the problem. | ||
| Do you see how you conflate and the way that you distort the reality? | ||
| All I can tell you is this, and please let me just make this point. | ||
| You conservatives have now been able to get the Federalist Society and your vision of America to be on full display. | ||
| How do you think history is going to look at the conservative movement and you and what you consider to be an evangelical? | ||
| I think we have the idea, Alexander. | ||
| We're about out of time. | ||
| I want to give Peter a chance to respond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, thank you. | |
| I think I have an idea. | ||
| There's a lot there. | ||
| How do I think that history will judge, I guess me, I guess that's what he's implying as a Christian person, as a person who calls himself conservative? | ||
| You know, I think in the past 45 minutes on the show, I've showed you where I agree and where I don't disagree with the people who are in charge of the conservative movement and the country. | ||
| I don't know you, so I can't label you as part of a movement and paint you with a broad brush and say you're the bad guy. | ||
| And nor would I, though, trust me, if you're on the left, there are a lot of people who are very bad guys. | ||
| I mean, we think about the past year alone, we've had a political assassination spree coming almost exclusively from the left. | ||
| Is history going to judge you poorly for being part of that? | ||
| the second that the left could no longer win elections, they started torching Teslas. | ||
| They started shooting at the most prominent. | ||
| President Trump has survived two assassination attempts. | ||
| Charlie Kirk, probably the most prominent conservative movement leader, literally got assassinated last month. | ||
| Now, does that speak highly of you and the movement you're in? | ||
| I don't think so, but I wouldn't say that because you're somebody who's on the left, that you are morally equivalent to the person who pulled the trigger. | ||
| That's just childish. | ||
| And it's a childish thing we have in our politics right now that if you have certain ideas or you have a certain identity, then I'm going to lump you in with all of the worst people in history. | ||
| That's why we have a hard time identifying actual Nazis and bad people when they're in our midst, because you say ridiculous things like that. | ||
| And so I would say for you as a piece of advice, don't paint with such a ridiculously and childishly broad brush. | ||
| I think we'll be in a better place if you do that. | ||
| We're going to have to end it there. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Peter Laffin, who is the deputy editor of commentary at the Washington Examiner, as well as the In Focus Editor. | ||
| I appreciate your time this morning. | ||
| Thank you so much for having me. | ||
| And coming up next, we're going to have a segment of Open Forum. | ||
| You can start calling in now. | ||
| Our line for Democrats is 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents at 202-748-8002. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
| William Arthur Galston has been a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution since 2006 and a columnist for the Wall Street Journal for the past 12 years. | ||
| In the first paragraph of his latest 161-page book, he tells us what the book is about. | ||
| Quote, this book advances this proposition that what I call the dark passions, anger, hatred, humiliation, resentment, fear, and the drive for domination fuels today's attacks on liberal democracy. | ||
| Galston also says, persuasive public speech is the main way demagogues mobilize these passions to pursue power. | ||
| The actual name of the book is Anger, Fear, Domination. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Author William Galston with his book, Anger, Fear, Domination, Dark Passions and the Power of Political Speech. | |
| On this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb, BookNotes Plus is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| And past president nominal. | ||
| Why are you doing this? | ||
| This is outrageous. | ||
| This is a kangaroo quarrel. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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 original series. | ||
| Today, best-selling biographer Walter Isaacson, who chronicles history's most remarkable lives. | ||
| His books include Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs, and Einstein. | ||
| He joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein. | ||
| What attracted you to these people? | ||
| Was it because they were geniuses or you just happened to like them? | ||
| Smart people are a dime a dozen. | ||
| In order to be a genius, you have to be creative. | ||
| You have to think out of the box. | ||
| And one of the things that struck me when I wrote about Benjamin Franklin early on was what a great scientist and technologist he was. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Watch America's Book Club with Walter Isaacson today at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | |
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We're an open forum ready to take your calls with comments about the public affairs and news issues of the day. | ||
| One story that we've been watching this morning here reported in the AP, immigration enforcement surge begins in Charlotte, North Carolina. | ||
| Officials confirm. | ||
| They're saying that federal officials confirmed on Saturday that a surge of immigration enforcement in North Carolina's largest city has begun as agents were seen making arrests in multiple locations. | ||
| Quote, Americans should be able to live without fear of violent criminal illegal aliens hurting them, their families, or their neighbors, end quote. | ||
| Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Trisha McLaughlin said in a statement, We are surging DHS law enforcement to Charlotte to ensure Americans are safe and public safety threats are removed. | ||
| Local officials, including Mayor V. Lyles, criticized such actions, saying in a statement that they are, quote, causing unnecessary fear and uncertainty. | ||
| We want people in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County to know we stand with all residents who simply want to go about their lives, the statement said. | ||
| It was also signed by Mecklenburg County Commissioner Mark Jarrell and Charlotte Mecklenburg School Board member Stephanie Sneed. | ||
| Crime is down in the city this year through August compared with the same months in 2024. | ||
| Homicides, rapes, robberies, and motor vehicle thefts fell by more than 20 percent, according to AH Data Lytics. | ||
| But President Donald Trump's administration has seized upon the fatal stabbing of Ukrainian refugee Irna Zarutska on a Charlotte light rail train to argue that Democratic-led cities fail to protect residents. | ||
| A man with a lengthy criminal record has been charged with a woman's murder. | ||
| There is some video there of that crackdown that's beginning in Charlotte, but let's go to open forum with the stories that you're following. | ||
| Dave is in Las Vegas, Nevada, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Dave. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'd just like to say, first of all, Trump is abusing power. | ||
| He's getting rid of everything that's good in this country, jobs, laws, everything. | ||
| Tells people to do violence. | ||
| He's just a terrible person. | ||
| And in 1994, Katie Johnson, he paid off. | ||
| What he did was it's documented. | ||
| He took a 13-year-old girl, tied her up for the Epstein files, tied her up. | ||
| That has not been confirmed. | ||
| But do you want to make your larger point, Dave? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the point is he's a sexual predator. | |
| Number two, will we see the photos of him with the young girls? | ||
| Will we see that? | ||
| Every time somebody tries to say something about this guy, you don't want to listen. | ||
| It's all documented in the California court. | ||
| He tied her up and beat her up and did he told the girl that if you say anything, I'll kill you and your family. | ||
| It's all in this report here. | ||
| And there's something wrong with this guy. | ||
| You know he's got depression. | ||
| And the 37 psychiatrists said he's got a warped mind. | ||
| This guy is the epitome. | ||
| He's starving our own people. | ||
| That's what he did. | ||
| You know, he doesn't get his way. | ||
| He threatens everybody, but nobody says anything. | ||
| This guy is a divider of this country. | ||
| And when they overthrew the government, they broke their oath through the Constitution. | ||
| We no longer have a country. | ||
| Do you understand? | ||
| And he's starving. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Here's the worst thing. | |
| Let me just say one more thing. | ||
| Can I say one more thing? | ||
| Over in Africa, he cut off the aid for 600,000 people and 400,000 kids starved to death as you're eating your Thanksgiving dinner this week. | ||
| They're all starving to death, literally. | ||
| The media doesn't report on. | ||
| They don't ask him any tough questions. | ||
| So I'm just really upset. | ||
| The guy's epitome of evil. | ||
| He's a very important person. | ||
| Dave, I understand your point. | ||
| I do want to follow up on those accusations that you mentioned about the 13-year-old girl who that was reported in various cases. | ||
| This is a story from back in 2016, referencing that story, that the woman who did accuse Donald Trump of raping her at 13 dropped the lawsuit at the time. | ||
| She alleged that Trump and billionaire Jeffrey Epstein raped her in 1994, but the accuser's attorney filed a voluntary dismissal, and President Trump had denied those accusations. | ||
| But that was a story that the caller was referencing. | ||
| Jim is in Asheville, North Carolina, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Jim. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning. | |
| And Jim, just can you please turn down the volume on your television and then you can go ahead with your point. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, what I would like to speak about is the thing with this Obama thing with the things that the Democrats have closed down. | |
| If we really use the situation with that, we need to know who's getting the benefits, how many people benefiting from the things of this file, and how many people, American people with so forth, and how many foreigners or so forth are receiving the goods of this. | ||
| Jim, we're still getting pretty bad feedback on your call, but I think I understand your point about wanting to have more details about who's receiving the health care benefits in the country. | ||
| Sal is in Ridge, New York on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Sal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| It's my opinion that what's going on with the food stamps and immigration is just a tip of the iceberg. | ||
| The money that gets funneled away from the poor and into the hands of the wealthy and the connected. | ||
| It's not by mistake. | ||
| It's my opinion that the unseen arm of the Catholic Church, the CIA, and the media are using artificial intelligence to break people from their political views, their religious views. | ||
| And a lot of what's going on in Ukraine, in my opinion, is just a holy war between, you know, the Orthodox Christians and the Catholic Christians. | ||
| It's the same thing that was going on in Ireland with the Catholics and the Protestants. | ||
| It's just moved to another area of the world. | ||
| That's my opinion. | ||
| That's what I think is going on, and that's where the problem is. | ||
| I think a lot of the immigration is probably immigration, but they're also targeting people, like I just said, you know, for political views and their religious views. | ||
| And they're using weapons of war that we don't know about, but it's happening. | ||
| They have artificial intelligence, and it's being used as a weapon of war. | ||
| You don't see it, but it's happening. | ||
| You know, people could be enslaved. | ||
| There's a new slavery. | ||
| It's not, you know, out in the open where people are owned by somebody. | ||
| You're owned by somebody by these means of these weapons. | ||
| You know, there's nothing you could do. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Let's hear from Carlos in California on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Carlos. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I listen to C-SPAN all the time because I like to know how the people in the country that I live in, what are they thinking of? | ||
| What are their problems? | ||
| What's going on? | ||
| And C-SPAN does give that. | ||
| And I commend C-SPAN for that. | ||
| I hope you guys let it go away because we are in trouble. | ||
| We are definitely in trouble. | ||
| We are an empire. | ||
| And if you look at history, all empires have an end, and it starts within. | ||
| And we're rottening from within. | ||
| You can look at it, listen to it. | ||
| I'm going to pray that he who has an ear, let him hear. | ||
| He who has eyes, let him see. | ||
| Because I don't, it's just craziness. | ||
| We're involved in craziness. | ||
| We're all Americans. | ||
| And first of all, I should have said this. | ||
| I am a Christian, and that's like a loaded word. | ||
| The gentleman you just had, he professes to be a Christian. | ||
| But Jesus Christ was a socialist. | ||
| Look it up. | ||
| He told rich people, give your money away to the poor. | ||
| What rich person is going to do that right now? | ||
| They're all greedy, want more, more, more. | ||
| We're going to let poor people starve and all that. | ||
| And label people socialism is a real ugly word, a profane word. | ||
| So I'm going to leave it there because I did pray, he who has an ear, let him hear. | ||
| He who has eyes, let him see. | ||
| Because we are in trouble. | ||
| And we're rotten from within. | ||
| Joseph is in Poughkeepsie, New York, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Joseph. | ||
| Joseph, you're an open forum. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| All right, we may have a lot. | ||
| Yes, go ahead, Joseph. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Who am I speaking with? | |
| You're an open forum on C-SPAN. | ||
| Is that who you called? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I called for Peter Laughin. | |
| Peter is already off the segment for now, but we are in open forum if you had a broader comment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, well, oh man, I missed him. | |
| Damn. | ||
| All right, then let's go to AJ in Kennesaw, Georgia on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, AJ. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Hope everyone has a blessed day. | ||
| Yes, it's been a very interesting. | ||
| C-SPAN is the number one show on TV in America. | ||
| So, real quick, today is Sunday, and we're talking about Christians. | ||
| Psalms 1017 says, No one who practices deceit will dwell in my house. | ||
| No one who speaks falsely will stand in my presence. | ||
| So God rejects deceitful people from his fellowship. | ||
| And so the Washington Post fact checker counted 30,573 false or misleading claims by Donald Trump during his first term. | ||
| That's over just 31,000 lies, basically. | ||
| And so here's the last thing I want to say: 91 criminal charges, six bankruptcies, four indictments, two impeachments, one convicted company, one fake charity shutdown, one fake university shutdown, 26 sexual assault allegations, $25 million fraud settlement, $5 million sexual abuse verdict, $2 million charity abuse judgment, | ||
| and 34 convicted felonies. | ||
| What else do I need to say? | ||
| Gregory is in New Jersey on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Gregory. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hello. | |
| Good morning to you and a blessed day to everybody. | ||
| I agree with a lot of people that just commented. | ||
| Donald Trump was the devil. | ||
| And yes, we are right when we're saying. | ||
| And I can't hear you. | ||
| I turned my TV off. | ||
| Oh, that's okay. | ||
| I wasn't saying anything. | ||
| I was letting you make your point, Gregory. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, I don't know, you know, because you cut them off. | |
| And if you say the wrong thing, a cuss word or anything, Donald Trump uses cuss words. | ||
| He's a racist, bigot. | ||
| He's everything you want to think of. | ||
| If you listen to some of his comments that he made, how he was abusing women, the sexual comments he made on an interview, he said, I touch him here, touch him there, and he gets the benefit of the doubt. | ||
| We got so much brainwashed in this country. | ||
| And the mess media. | ||
| Gregory, your line is breaking up. | ||
| I think you maybe have moved far from your phone. | ||
| Can you get reconnected? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I think there's so much brainwashment. | ||
| I'm sorry, Gregory, we can't hear you well anymore. | ||
| Let's go to Love in Atlanta, Georgia on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, love. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, I would just like to say, in reference to that last guest, I have been watching C-STAN Washington Journal for years because, like another caller said, I love to listen to what the country is thinking, the people, not the politicians, because we know what they think. | |
| And you guys, since this administration started, you constantly have conservative guests that just deflect. | ||
| They're condescending. | ||
| And the guest you just had, Larry, was very rude and condescending to specific guests. | ||
| I would like to. | ||
| Yes, yes, that guy. | ||
| Very condescending, very rude, very biased. | ||
| When people talk about Christians, I just like to say, I wish I met Jesus before I met a Christian because we use that term so loosely. | ||
| And these Christian evangelicals, the ones who are also Nazis and white supremacists and white nationalists, he said they're not all bad people. | ||
| I would love to know what makes them good because how do you not love your neighbor? | ||
| And you call yourself Christian. | ||
| And the last thing I would like to say is to all the black men that I've met who have said to me they did not vote for Kamala because she was married to a white man. | ||
| Imagine voting for a white man whose evil race is a pedophile and has told you many times what he thought about you. | ||
| That's all I have. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Robert is in Moreno Valley, California on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Robert. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thank you for taking my call. | |
| I was going to piggyback on what two of the people said just about Laugh and your previous guest that he was bending over backwards about certain things about conservatism that was masked as racism and how he said about fundamentalist Christians. | ||
| There's a difference between them and Christians because the most fundamentalist Christians right now are acting as if they believe in like 200 years ago and how they feel about people of color and things like that. | ||
| And as the last caller did say, he was condescending and rude. | ||
| And when people make these things, these statements saying that, oh, to lump everyone else out like that and whatnot, or you're being rude, you're being childish and stuff like that. | ||
| He knows what he's doing and what he's saying by that. | ||
| So he can't be trusted. | ||
| Another thing, if they're really upset about the Obamacare, they've had 15 to 20 years to come up with something else and they haven't done it, the Republicans or anything like that. | ||
| So whenever anyone says that about the price of Obamacare and premiums and everything, they haven't had anything but, quote, a concept of a plan that Trump said in his in part of his speech when he was debating Karmala Harris and nothing has ever been done. | ||
| And everyone just goes by the wayside and doesn't say anything about this and doesn't put people, their feet to the fire about these issues. | ||
| Or about the Epstein issues, how the last guest you just had, he didn't say anything about that that much and how, you know, that's a pressing issue, especially the so-called Christian man. | ||
| Okay, that's all I'd like to say. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| David is in Indiana on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Well, the Obama phones must have got pre-loaded today. | ||
| I just want to make a general comment regarding immigration and the benefits or no benefits. | ||
| Let's say that just for speaking terms, 5 million were allowed in illegally. | ||
| And we know it's more than that. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I hear the Democrats, oh, they don't get any benefits. | ||
| They don't get anything. | ||
| All right. | ||
| So they get sick. | ||
| Where do they go? | ||
| They go to the emergency room. | ||
| Oh, but that's all taken care of because anyone to be able to be treated in the emergency room, that's a law. | ||
| Okay, well, who reimburses it? | ||
| The federal government. | ||
| So where are these immigrants receiving their health care? | ||
| Where? | ||
| Are they just incredibly healthy and they don't go to doctors? | ||
| I mean, it's ridiculous. | ||
| And as far as food stamps and benefits in that category, 30 states, most of them blue states, expanded Medicaid to provide benefits to the illegal aliens. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And they set up all forms of fake. | |
| David, just to be clear, are you talking about food stamps or SNAP benefits or Medicaid here? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, here's the thing. | |
| The SNAP benefits, Democratic states allow illegal immigrants to sign up for SNAP benefits. | ||
| They pay it through the state. | ||
| The federal government refunds it. | ||
| Who pays for SNAP? | ||
| The federal government. | ||
| The states distribute it. | ||
| And the hatred that was spouted today that you let all these black people speak about Christianity. | ||
| God bless Obama so they can speak on their telefree telephones later. | ||
| Mark is in Albany, New York on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Mark. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for C-SPAN. | ||
| Hey, a couple callers ago, I just want to remind him about the 34 felonies in New York City. | ||
| If you look at the ingredients that went into that case, we had Michael Cohen, a liar, and we had, well, we had a Hooker porn star with their star witnesses. | ||
| So let's call them what they were. | ||
| There were 34 fake felonies, just like the fake Mueller report, just like the fake two impeachments, just like the fake election, and just like the fake insurrection investigation. | ||
| Unreal. | ||
| But I want to mention Epstein real quick. | ||
| There's only a certain number of people that were there. | ||
| They know what happened. | ||
| The rest of us, 7 billion of us, weren't there. | ||
| We don't know what happened. | ||
| So the only thing I can say about Epstein thing is forget about it. | ||
| Just forget about it. | ||
| We got better things to work on. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And can I mention one more thing about the shameful Schumer shutdown? | ||
| We wasted 40 days. | ||
| We wasted. | ||
| Schumer's been down there for 40 years. | ||
| He could have fixed this. | ||
| But no, he's been causing gridlock. | ||
| This is why we needed Donald Trump in the first time, first place. | ||
| And thank God we got him now. | ||
| Thank you for C-STAN. | ||
| Rosemary is in Nashville, Tennessee on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Rosemary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| And God bless you, dear, because you are really able to hold your peace and keep your patience with a lot of your callers. | ||
| You're really experienced at that, doing an awesome job. | ||
| I just want to mention that the major problem that we're having in this country today in our politics is money. | ||
| Those that have it, those that are trying to get it, those that don't have it. | ||
| Everybody's scraping after the almighty dollar. | ||
| We've lost our sense of community because of it. | ||
| And some of us have lost our sense of humanity. | ||
| There's no compassion for our neighbors. | ||
| And, you know, we need to get back to love your neighbor as you love yourself. | ||
| Be able to, or willing to help people when you see someone in need, just do it because it needs to be done and don't look for anything in return. | ||
| And with Donald Trump, Donald Trump is a bully. | ||
| He's always been a bully. | ||
| And he brings the money with him. | ||
| That's how he's able to keep his base, not so much his base, but his people in politics, his Congress, his house. | ||
| He's able to keep those people in line because he dangles that money, and they want to all get after that money with him. | ||
| They want to be, you know, as rich as they think he is. | ||
| He's telling them, look, I demand total loyalty, and you'll be rewarded for it. | ||
| If you get in trouble for it, don't worry. | ||
| We'll pardon you down the road. | ||
| But if you stick with me, I'll make you rich. | ||
| And they figure that money is power, and they're after that more than anything. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Next up is Brad in Florida on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Brad. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I just want to make a comment about Trump's initiative. | |
| You know, he said that he was going to, you know, treat Americans first, you know, and make America first. | ||
| He's not falling through on his promise, and he has added $8 trillion to the debt in his first term. | ||
| He's already added a trillion in debt this term, despite cutting all these programs. | ||
| And we're paying $3 trillion in interest. | ||
| And I think this is wrong. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Jim is in Virginia on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Jim. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Boy, what a, I appreciate the show. | ||
| It really displays a vast amount of misinformation out there. | ||
| Real quick, just these are all facts. | ||
| These are verifiable. | ||
| Look about yourself. | ||
| One, Trump never said the racists and everything were good. | ||
| He was talking about the people that wanted to keep some statutes for history purposes. | ||
| Number two, this 13-year-old, thank you for pointing that out. | ||
| That's just an allegation that was out there forever. | ||
| Three, they talk about the Democrats standing up for Obamacare and health care and everything. | ||
| That is their program. | ||
| Obamacare is their program. | ||
| These extensions that have expired, the Democrats put that expiration date in. | ||
| If people are complaining about the expiration, blame the Democrats and Biden because when that expiration date was put in, Biden was the president, the Democrats controlled the House, the Democrats controlled the Senate, and now they're winding that the extensions are terminated. | ||
| Well, why didn't they just go ahead and make it longer? | ||
| The final thing, and the most important thing, is there's a lot of talk about Christianity here, and all the people that are yelling for government action based upon Christianity are heretical. | ||
| Jim? | ||
| Oh, I'm sorry, Jim. | ||
| I think we lost your call and your connection there, but that is actually all the time that we have for the show today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But coming up next, C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | |
| We're funded by these television companies and more, including Sparklight. | ||
| What is great internet? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Is it strong? | |
| Is it fast? | ||
| Is it reliable? | ||
| At Sparklight, we know connection goes way beyond technology. | ||
| From Monday morning meetings to Friday nights with friends and everything in between. | ||
| But the best connections are always there, right when you need them. | ||
| So how do you know it's great internet? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because it works. | |
| We're Sparklight, and we're always working for you. | ||
| Sparklight supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy. | ||
| A funeral was held for conservationist and ethologist Jane Goodall at Washington National Cathedral. | ||
| Friends and family members paid tribute to the groundbreaking researcher, including her grandchildren and close friend and actor Leonardo DiCaprio. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| My name is Randy Hollerith. | ||
| I'm the Dean of the Cathedral, and on behalf of the Bishop and all of my colleagues here, welcome. | ||
| This cathedral is a house of prayer for all people, and you are always welcome here. | ||
| It is an honor for us to host this service this morning. | ||
| As one of my colleagues said today, Jane was one of the world's most remarkable human beings. | ||
| A woman who was loved by millions around the world. | ||
| She leaves a lasting legacy. | ||
| And while we mourn her death today, we also gather to celebrate her life and give thanks to God for all the gifts that she has given us throughout her 91 years. | ||
| So please be seated and let us begin. | ||
| Good morning, everyone, and welcome to a celebration of the life and legacy of Valerie Jane Goodall. | ||
| Or, as most of you know her, Dr. Jane Goodall. | ||
| My name is Anna Rathman and I had the distinct honor of working alongside Jane leading the Jane Goodall Institute. | ||
| Jane founded her organization nearly 50 years ago to ensure that her research in western Tanzania continued uninterrupted and that was very important to Jane that it remain uninterrupted. | ||
| And over the decades, her organization mirrored her own evolution and growth, first as a scientist, later as an activist, and finally as a globally recognized leader in conservation. | ||
| And working alongside Jane, from the forests of Africa to boardrooms around the world, I got to see not just what Jane did, but how she did it. | ||
| Jane was never the loudest in the room. | ||
| In fact, quite the opposite. | ||
| But her powerful message spoke volumes. | ||
| Of Jane's many superpowers, one that made her both successful as an ethologist and as an advocate was her ability to carry a quiet and comforting presence. | ||
| One that when paired with her witty charisma would disarm the staunchest opponents. | ||
| She reached across the chasms that divided people from other animals and across the chasms that divide all of us. | ||
| Jane was always firm in her beliefs, but never unfeeling in others' views. | ||
| She was always direct, but never aggressive, always kind, but never contentious. | ||
| She treated all beings on earth with a civility and respect. | ||
| She was a matriarch and a model in attitude and in action. | ||
| And many of you here today were part of Jane's life's work, either as partners, collaborators, or allies. | ||
| And when Jane spoke of her organization, she often described it in true Jane fashion as an ecosystem. | ||
| One where each member had an important role to play in this beautiful tapestry of life. | ||
| And as I look out into this assembly here today, that is exactly what I see. | ||
| It is a beautiful ecosystem built and connected by Jane. | ||
| It is an ecosystem not of flora and fauna, but one of purpose and passion, of curiosity and inquiry, of perseverance and the unwavering belief in the power of the indomitable human spirit. |