| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Britain is a mess. | ||
| It's a disgrace. | ||
| And we took their people at a tremendous amount. | ||
| We're not taking their people anymore. | ||
| We're not taking their people. | ||
| And we're getting a lot of their people out because they're nothing but trouble. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Thank you very much, everybody. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We have one question about this asylum claim that is being floated. | |
| Of course, you just detailed that this suspect was flown in under the Biden administration. | ||
| But was he granted asylum under your administration? | ||
| When it comes to asylum, when they're flown in, it's very hard to get them out. | ||
| No matter how you want to do it, it's very hard to get them out. | ||
| But we're going to be getting them all out now. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. McCarthy. | |
| Thank you, guys. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you, everybody. | ||
| Can't take that picture if you want impressions. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. President, what are you most grateful for this Thanksgiving? | |
| Thank you guys. | ||
| The fact that America's great again. | ||
| We made America great again. | ||
| America was a dead country. | ||
| We've made America great again. | ||
| Here you go. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, everybody. | |
| Thank you guys. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Coming up this morning on Washington Journal, along with your calls and comments live, musician and activist Darrell Davis, author of Clandestine Relationships and the Klan Whisperer, discusses his experience with the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups. | ||
| Also, Jason Steinauer, public historian and author, covers America 250 celebrations and how artificial intelligence is affecting how Americans interact with and consume American history. | ||
| Washington Journal is next. | ||
| join the conversation. | ||
| The National Guard member shot Wednesday. | ||
| Sarah Beckstrom of West Virginia died on Thanksgiving Day. | ||
| The other, Andrew Wolf, is still critical. | ||
| In response to the D.C. shootings, President Trump has said that the U.S. will, quote, permanently pause some migration from poor nations. | ||
| Good morning, and thanks for being with us on the Washington Journal. | ||
| We'll be talking about this issue for the first segment this morning. | ||
| I want to show you the headline in the Washington Times. | ||
| Guard member dies a day after targeted attack. | ||
| One of the National Guard members ambushed by a gunman just four blocks from the White House on Wednesday has died of her injuries. | ||
| This was President Trump speaking on Thursday. | ||
| Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20 years old, died a day after she and another guard member were targeted by an assailant. | ||
| Quote, she's just passed away. | ||
| She's no longer with us, Mr. Trump said in a live address Thanksgiving night. | ||
| She's looking down at us right now. | ||
| Specialist Beckstrom's father had said earlier Thursday that chances were slim that his daughter would survive the bullet wounds to her head and chest. | ||
| That's the front page of the Washington Times. | ||
| This is from Trending Politics this morning. | ||
| U.S. halts all Afghan visas after D.C. National Guard attack. | ||
| The State Department on Wednesday moved to freeze all immigration cases from Afghanistan after a 29-year-old Afghan national deliberately targeted and shot two National Guard soldiers in downtown Washington, D.C., leaving them fighting for their lives. | ||
| The U.S. Citizen Ship and Immigration Services announced late Wednesday that it had halted processing for Afghan nationals indefinitely. | ||
| Thousands of Afghan nationals have been attempting to enter the U.S. on immigration visas on claims that they aided coalition forces during the Afghanistan conflict or were at risk of harm from the nation's Taliban government. | ||
| Want to get your reaction to the shootings and to President Trump's reaction, halting permanently some migration? | ||
| 202 is the area code for all of our numbers. | ||
| 748-8000 for Democrats to call in. | ||
| 748-8001 for Republicans to call in. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| Now you can also send us a text message if you'd like. | ||
| 202-748-898003. | ||
| That's for text messages only. | ||
| Please include your first name and your city if you would. | ||
| We'll begin taking those calls in just a minute. | ||
| But here's President Trump from Mar-a-Lago yesterday. | ||
| Before we begin, I want to express the anguish and the horror of our entire nation at the terrorist attack yesterday in our nation's capital, in which a savage monster gunned down two service members in the West Virginia National Guard who were deployed as part of the DC task force, which has done such an incredible job. | ||
| I mean, until yesterday, we literally had no incidents for many months. | ||
| It was the safest place imaginable. | ||
| And this is a different kind of crime. | ||
| This is a really bad crime. | ||
| Millions of Americans are praying for those heroes and their families. | ||
| And I must unfortunately tell you that just seconds before I went on, right now, I heard that Sarah Beckstrom of West Virginia, one of the guardsmen that we're talking about, highly respected, young, magnificent person, started service in June of 2023. | ||
| Outstanding in every way. | ||
| She's just passed away. | ||
| She's no longer with us. | ||
| She's looking down at us right now. | ||
| Her parents are with her. | ||
| It's just happened. | ||
| She was savagely attacked. | ||
| She's dead. | ||
| She's now with us. | ||
| Incredible person. | ||
| Outstanding in every single way, in every department. | ||
| That's horrible. | ||
| As you know, the other young man is fighting for his life. | ||
| He's in very bad shape. | ||
| He's fighting for his life, and hopefully, we'll get better news with respect to him. | ||
| And the monster that did this is also in serious condition. | ||
| But we won't even talk about him. | ||
| As you may know, DHS has confirmed that the suspect is an Afghan national flown here by the previous administration, who was such a bad administration. | ||
| And I have a picture of a plane. | ||
| This is what it looked like when they came in with total bedlam. | ||
| Do you remember that period of time? | ||
| Total bedlam. | ||
| People crammed onto the plane. | ||
| And the toughest, meanest, most capable physically got on the plane. | ||
| Not the people that we were looking for or that they wanted to bring in. | ||
| Here's a picture for you. | ||
| Just take a look at that plane standing on top of each other, sitting on top of each other. | ||
| This is what we had under the Biden administration. | ||
| That whole thing should have never, ever happened. | ||
| And with that, President Trump announced that he will, that the U.S. will permanently pause some migration from poorer countries after the D.C. National Guard shootings. | ||
| That's what we're going to be talking about this morning. | ||
| You can see the numbers up there on the screen. | ||
| For Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, 2027-8001. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| Now, if you want to send a text message, 202-748-8003. | ||
| Please include your first name and your city if you would. | ||
| And if you want to continue this conversation, you can see the social media sites there on the screen. | ||
| Let's begin with Daryl, a Democrat in Columbus, Georgia. | ||
| Darrell, what's your reaction, A, to the shootings and to President Trump's reaction? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yes, my reaction is, first of all, I'm blaming three people right now. | ||
| The first person I'm blaming is Governor Patrick Morrissey of West Virginia. | ||
| The second person I'm blaming is Pete Hickstaff. | ||
| And the third person, of course, I'm blaming is Donald Trump. | ||
| Sarah Bextram should be alive this morning. | ||
| Sarah Bextram is a young lady that was from West Virginia, should be at home in West Virginia right now with her family. | ||
| But they tried to flex, trying to send all these National Guards from all over the United States to Washington, D.C. to try to prove a political point, and it's backfiring on them. | ||
| And that should have never happened. | ||
| Then, for the second thing I want to discuss, is the young man that killed these killed the young lady, excuse me, he was given asylum this year on Donald Trump. | ||
| So he can blame Joe Biden all he want. | ||
| Joe Biden did this and that back in 2021 and all that. | ||
| But the man was given asylum this year. | ||
| And so that's why he was still here. | ||
| And as a parent, I'm going to tell all you people, Democrat, Republican, Independent, whoever you are, if you got a young person right now that's wanting to go in the military, you need to be real careful. | ||
| I served under four presidents. | ||
| I served from 1986 to 2006. | ||
| I served under Reagan. | ||
| I served on the Papa Bush. | ||
| I served under Clinton. | ||
| And I served on the Sunbush. | ||
| And I was never afraid under those four presidents. | ||
| I might not have liked some of the things they did, but they kept me safe. | ||
| And under this administration, I'm going to tell you, I would not send my child nowhere near these guys. | ||
| I'm telling you. | ||
| And that's all I got to say, sir. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| That's Darrell in Columbus, Georgia. | ||
| This is Richard, Savannah, Georgia, Republican line. | ||
| Richard, what's your reaction? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| It's good to see you. | ||
| It's very heartbreaking that an innocent 20-year-old girl is no longer with us. | ||
| I think the root of the problem is why, I mean, if you think about it, open borders destroy nations. | ||
| We had an administration that allowed just millions and millions of people to come across unvetted. | ||
| And unfortunately, they came in from Afghanistan, totally unvetted, if you remember the flights coming out of Afghanistan. | ||
| And the border situation has caused so many innocent people to be killed, raped, murdered. | ||
| I come from Georgia where Lake and Raleigh was a big story. | ||
| And of course, there's so many others, whether it's Rachel Moran, Josh Lengry, or even if you look at the illegals driving tractor trailer trucks, killing three people in California, three people in Florida. | ||
| The problem with the people coming across, you never know who they are. | ||
| And I would love, I would absolutely love for C-SPAN to do a story on how many innocent people, women, children, have been killed, raped, or murdered from just the illegals. | ||
| I know CNN won't run it. | ||
| MSNBC won't run it. | ||
| But I would love to see you because, you know, we do watch you religiously, and we would love to see how many innocent people in America have been killed from the illegal immigration that came across from the Biden administration. | ||
| That's Richard in Savannah, and this is Josephine, Livingston, New Jersey, Independent Line. | ||
| Josephine, you're on the Washington Journal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I want to extend my condolences to the family of the National Guard person killed. | ||
| But it saddens me that this is going to be the number one unfortunate killing. | ||
| I've said before, and I have to say it as an independent, I knew when Trump would get in. | ||
| He intends to invade Venezuela. | ||
| He said it. | ||
| He intends to do in Nigeria. | ||
| This is a man who has something mentally wrong with him. | ||
| Because he didn't go into this service. | ||
| He doesn't mind putting other people in that situation. | ||
| Remember one thing. | ||
| No one died under Biden's services in the sense that they were sent there on an unnecessary mission, sadly. | ||
| And to blame everybody in the Afghan community for this murderous act, first find out the answers of why. | ||
| Why would you conduct all-round to everybody? | ||
| You don't know. | ||
| But unfortunately, you have a man who just likes to use this as a political statement. | ||
| Sadly, he's going to cause more harm than good. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Cal, out in Oklahoma, Democrats line. | ||
| Cal, please go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, sir. | |
| No one is going to justify or defend what happened with this fellow from Washington State. | ||
| I have 32 years of active reserve and guard duty, so I am heartbroken over the young lady's passing away. | ||
| Of course, if we were not patrolling the streets of D.C. with guardsmen, she would be somewhere else, not near Farragut Square. | ||
| As usual, I believe the President has properly expressed his regrets and then overreacted by declaring any person, any immigrant from Afghanistan, as I understand it, to be permanently barred, at least in his mind, from this country. | ||
| I don't think that's showing reasonable judgment in dealing with a tragedy. | ||
| Our own Guard units have deployed obviously yearly everywhere, and one deployment in approximately 2008, 9 in that timeframe, we lost a dozen wonderful young guardsmen during an Oklahoma deployment to Afghanistan. | ||
| So I share the heartbreak. | ||
| I also point out that there's a mature way to deal with it, and it is not this reaction which will now intensify, divide us, destroy any hope of making sense Of our immigration policies, at least related to this, to the country we have. | ||
| Thank you, Cal, for calling in. | ||
| President posted on True Social last night. | ||
| Even as we have progressed technologically, immigration policy has eroded those gains and living conditions for many. | ||
| I will permanently pause migration from all third world countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by sleepy Joe Biden's Autopen, | ||
| and remove anyone who is not an asset to the U.S. or is incapable of loving our country, end all federal benefits and subsidies to non-citizens of our country, denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any foreign national who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western civilization. | ||
| These goals will be pursued with the aim of achieving a major reduction in illegal and disruptive populations, including those admitted through an unauthorized and illegal AutoPen approval process. | ||
| Only reverse migration can fully cure the situation. | ||
| Other than that, happy Thanksgiving to all except those that hate, steal, murder, and destroy everything that America stands for. | ||
| You won't be here for long. | ||
| Next call is James in Annapolis, Maryland, Republican line. | ||
| James, you're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Hi. | ||
| So I've calmed down here in the last minute or so because it's just disappointing to hear such insightful, you know, rhetoric the day after you're supposed to give some celebration for family when, in some instances, every day people struggle with what the word family is. | ||
| And it's so lost so easily because of just noise. | ||
| I really am like, there's so many topics that you could hit. | ||
| You know, this shooting in DC is, in my opinion, you know, so sad in so many ways, but in actuality, it's just selective outrage. | ||
| You know, the actual shooting and death and loss of life that occurs every day in every community of this United States. | ||
| We are not a divided or a United States. | ||
| We are an absolute divided state. | ||
| And I don't want to take up all morning. | ||
| There's just so much to go into. | ||
| Social Security is such a fraudulent, misused bucket fund of money. | ||
| Social Security is for people who don't get pensions. | ||
| And the federal government made it impossible for businesses to be able to afford pensions. | ||
| Hey, tell you what, James, we're going off a little bit on the topic, but we appreciate you calling in. | ||
| Let's hear from Kurt. | ||
| Kurt is in Moscow, Pennsylvania, Independent Line. | ||
| Kurt, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning, C-SPAN. | |
| What a great community for our nation. | ||
| Thank you so much for being here. | ||
| Well, I'm going to say that this poor woman is, and I want to agree that the people who sent her there to DC are all guilty of her murder. | ||
| But I want to say that she's another casualty in this war on terror, which is based on a giant pile of lies of 9-11. | ||
| So if you want to be informed about that, try ae9-11truth.org. | ||
| But, you know, we have to be sad for all the soldiers that have been killed by people like Donald Trump with this war on terror, who, by the way, is a draft-dodging chicken hawk. | ||
| But how we have to also admit that this man who shot her was driven mad by what we did to Afghanistan, right? | ||
| And these people are heavily vetted to come here. | ||
| It's a very elaborate process to come here as an Afghan. | ||
| He worked with the CIA, and what we did to Afghanistan is absolutely disgusting and appalling. | ||
| Both parties did this. | ||
| Kurt, can I ask, are you legitimizing the shooting? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I'm trying to understand the dynamic of what happens. | |
| Like, for example, why do we have crime in our streets? | ||
| It's because of the failed drug war. | ||
| So why do we have all these deployed troops? | ||
| Because Trump wants to wage war on Chicago. | ||
| Well, the gangsters arrive with prohibition. | ||
| It happened with alcohol. | ||
| So this is a failed, also bipartisan problem, which leads to violence. | ||
| And I want to say one more idea here. | ||
| I think that we should have a draft in America and we draft the richest children of the Americans. | ||
| All the richest families in America, your kids are up for the draft. | ||
| No deferment because this has got to stop. | ||
| We are killing people around the world based on this war on terror authorization. | ||
| And who is fighting these wars? | ||
| It's the poor of America. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Kurt, we got the point. | ||
| Edna, New Iberia, Louisiana, Democrats line. | ||
| Good morning to you, Edna. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for my call. | ||
| I just want to say that the blood of that poor young woman is on Trump head, and he's trying to throw it on Biden. | ||
| When is he going to take responsibility for his office? | ||
| He just put Biden into everything he does. | ||
| He makes speeches. | ||
| It's Biden. | ||
| Everywhere he goes, it's Biden for he's the president right now. | ||
| And this happened under his watch. | ||
| So he should take the role for it. | ||
| Not Biden. | ||
| Biden at home in his bed. | ||
| He's still doing all. | ||
| And the man who mentioned about Lincoln Riley, Lincoln Riley was no hero. | ||
| She was just a terrible person getting in the Capitol, breaking windows and do everything else this day. | ||
| I think you're mistaking Lincoln Riley. | ||
| She was a young woman in Georgia, I believe, who was out jogging. | ||
| So thank you, Edna, for calling in. | ||
| Jeff, North Carolina, Republican, please go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'll tell you what, man, it's all I can do to maintain stability here hearing some of this stuff. | ||
| These callers that don't know what in the world they're talking about. | ||
| We had one president that was asleep comatose when all these millions walked across the border and was flew in in the dead of the night. | ||
| You got one president trying to stop it. | ||
| The lady that died on Thanksgiving Day, she was there to save lives. | ||
| Her being there saved lives, but that's what people need to be thankful for. | ||
| But I tell you what, this is just the start of it. | ||
| They have the government don't know how many of these people are here, how many come across in four years. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just buckle up and hold on to your hat because it's going to get nasty. | |
| Here's the Hill publication this morning. | ||
| Republicans outraged over National Guard shooting. | ||
| Press for immigration crackdown. | ||
| Republicans on Capitol Hill are calling for more immigration restrictions after two National Guard members were shot. | ||
| The CIA said the suspect worked for the agency in Afghanistan prior to the U.S. withdrawal. | ||
| He immigrated to the U.S. as part of a Biden administration program to resettle Afghan refugees who helped the U.S. during its 20-year war. | ||
| Representative Mary Miller, Republican of Illinois, in a post online, responded to a headline on the incident from the New York Post, writing, Deport them all now. | ||
| John, New York, Independent Line. | ||
| John, where in New York are you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm in the South by Kingston, but I love this station. | |
| I love the journal, Western Journal, but I listen to your callers, and a lot of this information that they repeat and they get all upset about is the information that you feed them every day. | ||
| And I wish there was a way you could make your information more diverse rather than rely predominantly on pretty much the Times, Politico, and all that. | ||
| And invite some different guests on there. | ||
| What would you like to see, John? | ||
|
unidentified
|
What would you like to see us use? | |
| What do I want to say? | ||
| I want to say... | ||
| No, what would you like to see us incorporate into our information sharing? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, your editors have to know. | |
| You guys are part of the media, right? | ||
| So you must have good editors on there. | ||
| So, John, again, what kind of information is missing or what point of view is missing that you would like to see added? | ||
|
unidentified
|
A different. | |
| So you have two guests on there. | ||
| One is they don't call Trump a fascist. | ||
| They don't call him a predator. | ||
| They don't call him this. | ||
| It's all Trump's fault. | ||
| And you know what? | ||
| Where do you think they get that information from? | ||
| You guys reading, every newspaper you rely on in Politico, and you repeat it over and over again, and then you feed them this information, and they listen to you and they trust you. | ||
| But you guys, you don't have anybody else in there saying, no, it wasn't him. | ||
| He was in there. | ||
| He has every right to put people in there to try to stop crime and stuff like that. | ||
| It may not be the right approach, but it's his approach. | ||
| John, thank you for sharing your point of view and for your suggestions. | ||
| Mike is calling in from Ohio on our Democrats line. | ||
| Mike, you're on the Washington Journal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I just wanted to make one point. | ||
| There was a bit of information that came over the wire this morning, not verified, clarified yet, but that the gentleman, the former officer trained by the CIA, the Afghani citizen, he was also schizophrenic, allegedly. | ||
| And he thought they were going to deport him. | ||
| And he panicked and then overreacted. | ||
| That's a story people need to look into because that says a lot because he was afraid of the ICE agents. | ||
| His service over there, you have to wonder what did Afghanistan do to us where our soldiers were there for over 20 years. | ||
| You know, those poor people, many millions were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and so forth. | ||
| We need to stop these foreign wars that are avoidable, unnecessary. | ||
| That's what we have as a lot of enemies around the world because of this past these policies across many administrations. | ||
| Thank you, sir, for calling in. | ||
| We are talking about the National Guard shootings on Wednesday. | ||
| One of the National Guard members, Sarah Beckstrom, died on Thanksgiving. | ||
| In response, President Trump has said that the U.S. will permanently ban migration after these National Guard shootings. | ||
| We're getting your reaction to that. | ||
| We'll put the numbers up on the screen. | ||
| Another Mike is calling from North Carolina, Republican line. | ||
| Mike, where in North Carolina are you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm about 20 miles west of Charlotte. | |
| I'm in a little rural area of Cherryville and Besmer City. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| What's your reaction to our conversation this morning? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The main reason why do you think the National Guard was in D.C., why do you think they're going to these cities? | |
| That every one of them is because of the soft from the judges to the leadership of these blue cities. | ||
| They're giving cash-free bail. | ||
| Look at what happened on the rail line in Charlotte of that man. | ||
| Look how many times he's been arrested and set out. | ||
| Look at the one that just happened this past week in Chicago. | ||
| 87 arrests and eight of them felonies. | ||
| It's the blue city Democrats are to blame for this. | ||
| It ain't Trump. | ||
| If they would actually prosecute these people and they'd need to build more prisons, and this country needs to get prisons like Seacott in El Salvador. | ||
| This soft on crime, I don't matter if they're 10 years old or 110. | ||
| This mental health thing, what do they shut down all the mental institutions around here and they let them out because they say it's cruel and inhumane. | ||
| You tell me the victims, parents, and the family that get murdered by these animals, just like this Islamic Afghan terrorist. | ||
| He murdered these people. | ||
| And Trump is exactly right. | ||
| Keep these people out of our country. | ||
| And Biden's administration and Mjorkas ought to be tried for treason. | ||
| Look how many, 10 million and plus more came into this country unvetted. | ||
| That's Mike in North Carolina. | ||
| This is Scott in New York, Independent Line. | ||
| Scott, please go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| And thank God for us humans in America. | ||
| And I think that half the problem is you guys letting people tell mistruths on your show. | ||
| Yesterday, I got so upset when some lady was talking about the guy coming across the border down south. | ||
| The truth, like what you left out, the truth when you told something a couple minutes ago about the guy. | ||
| What you left out was in April, in April of this year, the gentleman was vented by the FBI in the Trump administration. | ||
| I think the answer is, is when people get on here and start spewing lies, mistruths, you need to cut us off. | ||
| I think that would be the answer because I really believe by people, and it's in both sides, Democrat and Republican, but I see it more on the Republicans. | ||
| It's all about the illegal aliens coming across the border from Mexico, all them dark skins, when actually the FBI allowed him permanent stay as of April in April of this year through the Trump administration. | ||
| What would these Republicans be saying about poor Biden if Biden was to have vented him back in April of this year and gave him permanent residency? | ||
| Please tell the truth. | ||
| Let's start with the truth. | ||
| You have any questions for me? | ||
| I'd love to have it. | ||
| God bless us humans in America. | ||
| That's Scott in New York, and this is Kathleen, a Democrat in Chicago. | ||
| Kathleen, you're on the Washington Journal. | ||
| Welcome. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, thank you. | |
| I'm so glad I came behind this guy in New York because that's one of the things that I was going to say. | ||
| This guy was okay by the Trump administration, irregardless of what Biden did. | ||
| But my point is, no matter what happens in this country, it seems like Trump want to get rid of everybody that's not of European. | ||
| Anybody of color that do anything in this country is bad. | ||
| But what about the white guys in this country that's killing people? | ||
| Why isn't he trying to deport them? | ||
| Only both killing this country is just black people and immigrants. | ||
| What about the white guys, these young white boys going into these schools, killing and shooting innocent babies? | ||
| I never hear him say when a white man or a white woman kill, a kill is a kill, sir, no matter who. | ||
| I don't sanction anybody that takes somebody's life because nobody has a right to do that. | ||
| But it's always when somebody that's not European that's killing. | ||
| Trump, Trump, let me tell you something, President Trump. | ||
| You don't own this country. | ||
| You are immigrant. | ||
| Your wife is an immigrant. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| They have as much right in this country as you and your family. | ||
| This is God's country. | ||
| Now, I can see if you start saying you're going to deport some white folks, but you don't speak about white folks. | ||
| White folks don't care. | ||
| That's Kathleen in Chicago, Democrats line. | ||
| From Breitbart this morning, GOP rep Buddy Carter, comments from left-wing politicians led to D.C. shooting. | ||
| Thursday on Fox News channels. | ||
| Fox News Live, Representative Buddy Carter, said, left-wing politicians, their comments caused two members of the National Guard to be shot in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday. | ||
| Carter said, first of all, to Andy Wolf and Sarah Bextrom, please know that you are in our prayers and to their families, please know a grateful nation unites in prayer for their recovery. | ||
| Look, this is something that happens whenever you have the left-wing politicians making comments like they are making. | ||
| I mean, when you have someone like Senator Alyssa Slotkin, who is encouraging the military to disobey the commander-in-chief, when you have someone like Senator John Oshoff, who is saying that having the troops in Washington is an embarrassment, when you have someone like Virginia Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger, who is saying, let your rage fuel you, these are the types of things that lead to this kind of action. | ||
| Next call is John in Massachusetts. | ||
| Republican line. | ||
| John, where in Massachusetts are you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm next to Springfield. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I know who killed those two soldiers. | ||
| And I'm going to explain it, but please don't cut me off. | ||
| And I'm going to do it as polite as I possibly can. | ||
| It was an inside job. | ||
| It was done by the swamp on Wall Street and in D.C. | ||
| And you can call this the swamp C-SPAN because it was done by our CIA, who has been dealing drugs internationally. | ||
| They're the ones. | ||
| John, you got to turn down your TV and just, okay, we got all your connections now. | ||
| Tell us where you're getting this information and how you're drawing these lines. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, because you can look it up and you can go to the Corbett report. | |
| The CIA's been dealing drugs since I can remember. | ||
| That's why they were in Afghanistan to keep the poppy seeds over there so they can run. | ||
| So that's where you're getting your information online at the Corbett Report. | ||
| John of Massachusetts, thank you for calling. | ||
| Bill, Texas Independent. | ||
| Go ahead, Bill. | ||
| Where in Texas are you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
At 766 for no, no, no. | |
| Bill, what city are you in? | ||
| Sorry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Art, Texas, Mark, Texas. | |
| All right, go ahead, please. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What's your comment? | |
| Well, I'd just like to say that God bless Sarah Bextram. | ||
| I know she's in heaven, and she's, I hate, you know, 20 years old. | ||
| But I'd just like to say, some of these people that hate America have been calling in and want to talk about race and hate, these Democrats. | ||
| You know, the United States military loves Donald Trump. | ||
| They voted for him across the board. | ||
| U.S. Air Force, the United States Navy, the United States Coast Guard, the Marines, everybody voted for him overwhelmingly. | ||
| And they'll vote for him even more if the election was held again. | ||
| He'd win even more. | ||
| They love him. | ||
| Every time he steps out on the stage to go to an event, they love him. | ||
| And because he loves America, they know he loves America. | ||
| And these Democrats, like him six traitors, that tried to cause sedition, you know. | ||
| But Biden, back during the Afghan pullout, he did it so horrible in the radical left that was running the White House. | ||
| They caused them 13 Marines to get killed. | ||
| Now it's 14. | ||
| Then there was 171 civilians that got killed. | ||
| And 45 got critically injured, other Marines that got critically injured. | ||
| And they can, you know, Trump's doing everything. | ||
| He's stopping the gunboats, the drugs, and the Democrats, they want to let the gunboats with the drugs pour into this country just like they did for the last four years. | ||
| Bill, you say that, but why would the Democrats want the drugs to come into the country? | ||
| What's your reasoning there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
If you look at some of these Democrat-run cities, especially like Johnson out of Chicago, why does he not want Trump to come in and cut these drug cartels off? | |
| Trump could come in and stop his drugs from pouring into his city. | ||
| Personally, and I know there's been, you know, but personally, I think the man's getting a cutoff of it. | ||
| Bill in Texas. | ||
| Linda's in Minneapolis. | ||
| Democrat. | ||
| Linda, you're on the journal. | ||
| Good morning to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| What I have to say is very short, but I agree with those who say the National Guards should not have been sent in. | ||
| And I do think it's Trump's fault, but the ultimate fault goes with the Supreme Court because they gave Trump all power to do whatever he wants. | ||
| I say it's the Supreme Court if you want to put blame on anyone. | ||
| And that's all I have to say. | ||
| Next call is from Gene in Arthur, Illinois, Republican line. | ||
| Gene, we're talking about the National Guard shootings on Wednesday here in D.C. and President Trump's reaction to it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The first thing is the lady that called in about no death under Trump. | |
| How many were killed in Afghanistan when that sniper, I watched the hearings on C-SPAN, that sniper said that he could kill that guy that had that explosive in the mobram, that airbase, where those 13 young people got killed? | ||
| The next thing I want to say, that young lady needs to be praised because she did not have to be there. | ||
| She volunteered. | ||
| Those two people volunteered to be there because they thought they were doing the right thing. | ||
| Don't blame Trump. | ||
| These people are dedicated, and they need to be praised forever, and she will be honored the rest of her life. | ||
| And I'm so tired of all this hate. | ||
| And this crime is what's causing a lot of this. | ||
| We need to get rid of this crime, and that's what Trump is trying to do, and they won't let him. | ||
| That's Gene in Illinois, and Michael is next in Connecticut, Independent line. | ||
| Michael, please go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, Donald Trump never misses an opportunity to demonize people of color, and that's what he's doing right now. | |
| Look at the 19 countries he's decided to end migration on. | ||
| All of them, countries where their people are dark skinned. | ||
| Let's leave it at that round of black countries. | ||
| He just never misses an opportunity for what really is ethnic and racial cleansing. | ||
| That's his policy, ethnic and racial cleansing. | ||
| Remember, it was Donald Trump who sent those National Guardsmen to Washington, D.C. when it was clear not necessary. | ||
| They were not necessary. | ||
| And so what's he going to do to fix that problem? | ||
| Send in 500 more National Guardsmen to exacerbate the problem, to make it worse than it is. | ||
| It is sad that the real problem is sitting in the White House, and we come up with a real issue that can be dealt with. | ||
| He does nothing more than make it worse. | ||
| It's nonstop. | ||
| It's constant. | ||
| And the truth is it has to be stopped. | ||
| And it really lies on the people of the United States of America. | ||
| When Election Day comes, recognize where the real problem is and fix it with your vote because it really lies with us. | ||
| And it's got to be corrected. | ||
| That's Michael in Connecticut. | ||
| This is the Washington Examiner. | ||
| Young voters are growing more tolerant of political violence. | ||
| A rising number of young people are embracing the idea that political violence is acceptable thanks in part to increasingly hysterical Democratic rhetoric and the tolerance of blatant acts of violence on the national stage. | ||
| A politico public first poll found that 36% of adults aged 18 to 24 believe, quote, that there are some instances where violence is justified when it comes to politics. | ||
| So too do 35% of 25 to 34 year olds and 34% of 35 to 44 year olds. | ||
| That number shrinks among the older age groups, notably the 18 to 24 age demographic is the only one in the poll where a majority of people said they do not have friends who support a different political party. | ||
| And the Washington Examiner does come from a conservative point of view. | ||
| Curtis in Lancaster, PA, Democrat. | ||
| Curtis, go ahead. | ||
| Curtis, you got to turn down the volume on your phone. | ||
| Otherwise, we get the feedback. | ||
| Let's hear from Ray calling in from Tennessee on the Republican line. | ||
| Ray, where in Tennessee are you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Pleasant to you. | |
| And where is that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's about 22 miles west of Nashville. | |
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| Please go ahead and make your comment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
First of all, this whole mess is because of the people that run the country. | |
| It wasn't Biden. | ||
| Biden was asleep. | ||
| These people come in this country and Donald Trump is trying to get them out, the bad ones. | ||
| And these people with Trump-Derrain syndrome, look, American people out there with good common sense, just be comforted and know that this is a small group of people in this country that's got this Trump-Derrain syndrome. | ||
| Every time they open their mouth, it's Trump. | ||
| Look, it's time to straighten this country out. | ||
| I'm 82 years old. | ||
| I served in Vietnam. | ||
| That was under. | ||
| Ray, you still with us? | ||
| Oh, we lost Ray. | ||
| Let's hear from Betty in Charlotte, Independent Line. | ||
| Betty, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, good morning. | |
| And my condolences to the young lady's family that lost their daughter yesterday. | ||
| And the reason why I'm calling is because the National Guard doesn't police cities. | ||
| Their jobs are to back up the military. | ||
| No country has invaded Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C. | ||
| It's a safe place to visit. | ||
| I was just there in June, had a wonderful time. | ||
| I could take my grandkids to D.C. to visit the museums. | ||
| So please, people, realize that the National Guard is not needed in D.C. | ||
| That is not their job. | ||
| They're just standing around doing nothing. | ||
| They're walking around, not protecting anyone. | ||
| They're just walking the streets. | ||
| And we are not invaded by another country. | ||
| So why are they there in the capital city? | ||
| Why? | ||
| Betty in Charlotte, and this is Carolyn in Charlotte, Democrat. | ||
| Go ahead, Carolyn. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, C-Span. | |
| I just wanted to kind of piggyback on what this young lady said: that there's no need for the military to be in these cities. | ||
| Give an example in Charlotte, North Carolina. | ||
| We're almost a million population. | ||
| We have more cats. | ||
| We have more everything. | ||
| We have more crime than anything. | ||
| So, I mean, that's the reason for him to send all those troops into these cities. | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| Trump is running on racism. | ||
| Racism is a weak spot in the United States. | ||
| So he's using it to his advantage. | ||
| So basically, he's a patsy because the corporations are on to the National Treasury. | ||
| So what he's doing is militarizing the whole USA. | ||
| And everybody's going to be in it for a big shock because we have policemen, we have the FBI, the FBI, we have everything in effect in these cities to do the job. | ||
| But Trump is Trump and them. | ||
| He's federalizing the cities slowly but surely based on some type of ideologic that we have more crime than we have. | ||
| And he's using racism to cushion himself. | ||
| This is totally ridiculous, but everybody's going to be in for a big shock because it's ridiculous that he has to do that. | ||
| Our chef, if you can find anything about him, our chef Gary McStanton had a thousand warrants for immigrants that had done crimes. | ||
| ICE came here and didn't even look at it, but they accuse us of being a blue city when they're doing five leg operations. | ||
| All right, Caroline. | ||
| Charlotte, Betty, South Carolina, Republican line. | ||
| Betty, where in South Carolina are you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Lightsburg. | |
| Thank you, ma'am. | ||
| Please go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What's your comment? | |
| Yeah, I agree with the woman from Illinois, the man from Tennessee. | ||
| I wonder if all these people, I don't hear all the Democrats. | ||
| Nothing said is true. | ||
| The Republicans that was on there, I didn't hear it fine, but about Donald Trump for good that he has done. | ||
| What if this was some of these people that is talking about Donald Trump that just like that girl got killed, just died? | ||
| What about her parents? | ||
| What about if it was your children that ran and got killed? | ||
| What about some of the Democrats? | ||
| And it's not white people that's killing. | ||
| It's the illegals that come across this border. | ||
| And why would Donald Trump want to get rid of all them people and send them back to their country where they should be? | ||
| You know. | ||
| All right, Betty in South Carolina. | ||
| Travis, Ohio, Independent. | ||
| Travis, you're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, hi. | |
| I just want to point out, you know, every place is safe until it isn't. | ||
| And, you know, with all this stuff going on, you know, we did just, you know, let Russia. | ||
| Can you hear me? | ||
| We're listening. | ||
| Please go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And just the way, you know, like Biden ran Russia right into the arms of China. | ||
| You know, every place isn't the greatest, safest right now. | ||
| You know, lots of illegals. | ||
| You know, we're just trying to prove, we're just trying to make sure that the D.C. isn't messed with. | ||
| That's Travis in Ohio. | ||
| Wall Street Journal this morning editorial, the ambush on the National Guard. | ||
| This is how they conclude it. | ||
| The Trump administration said it has paused processing immigration applications from Afghanistan. | ||
| And Mr. Trump said the attack justifies his mass deportation policy. | ||
| But it would be a shame if this single act of betrayal became the excuse for deporting all Afghan refugees in the U.S. Tens of thousands are building new lives here in peace and are contributing to their communities. | ||
| They shouldn't be blamed for the violent act of one man. | ||
| Collective punishment of all Afghans in the U.S. won't make America safer, and it might embitter more against the United States. | ||
| Margarita, calling in from New York. | ||
| Democrat, Margarita, please go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| I'm glad I'm off today, so I'm able to call this early in the morning. | ||
| I just thought a very short thing. | ||
| I just don't understand what's going on. | ||
| Republicans, Democrats, I'm listening to these people. | ||
| We're all equal. | ||
| We're all immigrants. | ||
| Our families came from all over. | ||
| I'm from New York City. | ||
| We have everyone here from all over. | ||
| And Trump, my one question before I hang up is how are we allowing a president who's threatening death to Congress people who's just horrific, whether you're Democrat or Republican, it doesn't matter. | ||
| All those protesters are Democrat and Republicans. | ||
| The Republicans have to get their act together because he's coming to your cities where your own families, your own families, if they're from different countries, are going to be stopped also. | ||
| I think they should start impeachment immediately and get him out and get somebody who cares what the world is really about. | ||
| That's Margarita in New York City. | ||
| President Trump spoke from Mar-a-Lago yesterday. | ||
| Here's a portion of what he had to say. | ||
| Before we begin, I want to express the anguish and the horror of our entire nation at the terrorist attack yesterday in our nation's capital, in which a savage monster gunned down two service members in the West Virginia National Guard who were deployed as part of the DC task force, which has done such an incredible job. | ||
| I mean, until yesterday, we literally had no incidents for many months. | ||
| It was the safest place imaginable. | ||
| And this is a different kind of crime. | ||
| This is a really bad crime. | ||
| Millions of Americans are praying for those heroes and their families. | ||
| And I must unfortunately tell you that just seconds before I went on, right now, I heard that Sarah Beckstrom of West Virginia, one of the guardsmen that we're talking about, highly respected, young, magnificent person, started service in June of 2023. | ||
| Outstanding in every way. | ||
| She's just passed away. | ||
| She's no longer with us. | ||
| She's looking down at us right now. | ||
| Her parents are with her. | ||
| It's just happened. | ||
| She was savagely attacked. | ||
| She's dead. | ||
| Now with us. | ||
| Incredible person. | ||
| Outstanding in every single way in every department. | ||
| That's horrible. | ||
| As you know, the other young man is fighting for his life. | ||
| He's in very bad shape. | ||
| He's fighting for his life, and hopefully we'll get better news with respect to him. | ||
| And the monster that did this is also in serious condition. | ||
| But we won't even talk about him. | ||
| As you may know, DHS has confirmed that the suspect is an Afghan national flown here by the previous administration, who was such a bad administration. | ||
| And I have a picture of a plane. | ||
| This is what it looked like when they came in. | ||
| It was total bedlam. | ||
| Do you remember that period of time? | ||
| Total bedlam. | ||
| People crammed onto the plane. | ||
| And the toughest, meanest, most capable physically got on the plane. | ||
| Not the people that we were looking for or that they wanted to bring in. | ||
| Here's a picture for you. | ||
| Just take a look at that plane standing on top of each other, sitting on top of each other. | ||
| This is what we had under the Biden administration. | ||
| That whole thing should have never, ever happened. | ||
| And that was President yesterday in Mar-a-Lago. | ||
| Back to your calls. | ||
| Johnny, Maysville, Kentucky, Republican. | ||
| Johnny, you're on the Washington Journal. | ||
| Please go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, well, about the shooting, well, that was because Donald Trump went hog wild over his immigration rights. | |
| Like people has been here for 30 years, paid taxes, and worked here for 30 years, and he just went hogwild on it. | ||
| And, well, that's probably what caused it. | ||
| And, well, I have to let, I want to make a little announcement. | ||
| You can welcome me to the Democratic Party. | ||
| I got a paper out of the county clerk's office. | ||
| Don't cut me off. | ||
| I got a paper out of the county clerk's office. | ||
| I'm switching parties. | ||
| I'm switching over a Democrat because I'm fed up with it. | ||
| He's a racist, a fascist, and he hates poor people. | ||
| Well, all he wants to do is cut our benefits off with his Project 2025. | ||
| And all I can say about the Republicans, just get a vault, lock your guns up in a vault, and don't worry about it. | ||
| They're not going to go door to door. | ||
| They're not going to do that. | ||
| They can't enforce it. | ||
| If you lose your benefits, your Social Security or Medicare, wherever they're going to come for next, you won't be able to buy a gun. | ||
| So just get a vault. | ||
| Lock them up. | ||
| That's Johnny in Maysville, Kentucky. | ||
| Matt is in New York Independent Line. | ||
| Where in New York are you, Matt? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Upstate New York. | |
| Please go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, I would like to first start off by saying a happy Thanksgiving to everyone that does that. | |
| Anybody that's out there, spread peace and equality. | ||
| Let's think of America is great. | ||
| It has always been great. | ||
| It will always be great. | ||
| Good always wins. | ||
| That's just how it is. | ||
| America, make America great again. | ||
| Ronald Reagan started that. | ||
| Don Trump stole that from him. | ||
| He's a con man. | ||
| He does that. | ||
| He steals everything. | ||
| With everything that's going on, Arizona, how do you say, Elita Rujova finally got voted in by sworn in by the liar Mike Johnson? | ||
| And what happened to Epstein files? | ||
| Where did that go to? | ||
| Why is nobody people just forget about stuff that's really right? | ||
| And that is taking us a little bit off course today. | ||
| We are talking about what happened in D.C. on Wednesday night and the president's reaction when it comes to migration to the U.S. David, Lakeland, Florida, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning to you. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I think this is a simple fix for everybody here in the United States. | ||
| I believe that 357 Smith Wesson that was used in this brutal killing was made right here in the U.S. | ||
| And that's the whole problem to the situation. | ||
| There's way too many guns being out here in the streets because of manufacturers. | ||
| And why aren't senators and congressmen going after these gun manufacturers and stopping so many weapons being manufactured and getting in the wrong hands of people? | ||
| I think that's the end of this story. | ||
| Eliminate guns. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| Raul, Miami, Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning, sir. | |
| First of all, condolences to the brave National Guardsmen. | ||
| Whose idea was it to put this young lady in a combat situation? | ||
| The idea of women in combat is not realistic. | ||
| And we see tragedies like this because they become an easy target of the enemy. | ||
| The other thing I'd like to say is: whose idea was it to put National Guardsmen in Washington, D.C., which is basically a combat zone, and not use combat formations? | ||
| In the 1960s, when the rioting took place throughout the United States, President Johnson sent the National Guard, even the airborne, locked and loaded with fixed bayonets and helmets. | ||
| You see the poor National Guardsmen without any direction, without any military formation, wandering the streets not only of D.C., but throughout the United States, as if they were Boy Scouts. | ||
| Everybody knows they're not Boy Scouts. | ||
| You can see them talking to one another. | ||
| They are not in military formation. | ||
| They are not being led to do what they're supposed to do. | ||
| And of course, these monsters, like this Afghan fellow, are going to take advantage of that. | ||
| The military leaders have to face reality and stop being public relations panderers and put those soldiers in military formations and get some leadership to protect them. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Next call is Stephen in Quincy, Illinois, Independent Line. | ||
| Stephen, you're on the Washington Journal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Back in 2021, the mess in Afghanistan was inherited by Biden and caused by an absolute outrageous agreement that the Trump administration entered into with the Taliban. | ||
| We'd withdrawn almost all of our troops, and there were just a small little footprint of Americans there. | ||
| When they pulled out, the Afghan government didn't even support us. | ||
| Number one. | ||
| Number two, there was a huge outcry by many people, by many Republicans, saying we had to protect the Afghans that stood with the Americans during the long period of time that we were there because the Taliban was going to kill them. | ||
| That's why we brought many of those Afghans to the United States. | ||
| Number two. | ||
| Number three, in May of this year, the Trump administration gave the man accused of doing the shooting, or he probably did it, gave him asylum. | ||
| That means they recognized that he was going to be here permanently, and that allowed him to legally buy a gun. | ||
| So Trump screaming and yelling, and the head of the FBI and that woman that's the prosecutor in Washington, D.C., blaming Biden. | ||
| Oh, he let this man in and he wasn't vetted and this and that and the other. | ||
| It was the Trump administration that gave this man asylum. | ||
| Didn't they check his background? | ||
| Why did they give him asylum? | ||
| So therefore, I conclude that the shooting is a consequence and fault of the Trump administration. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Quincy, Illinois, and Lonnie Salisbury, North Carolina, Democrat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| How y'all doing? | ||
| How are you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look, everyone in the Trump administration, as far as the military goes, everything that goes wrong is because of Biden. | |
| He takes no responsibility, none. | ||
| Now, it's Trump's fault. | ||
| Trump has blood on his hands, and so does the Supreme Court. | ||
| Without them, Trump wouldn't be able to do any of the wrongs that he's doing. | ||
| It's sad that that guardsman was killed, but Trump had her killed. | ||
| There was no need for those people, the National Guard in D.C. Everyone begged him not to send troops into their cities. | ||
| He didn't care because it's no one in his family, no one he knows. | ||
| He wasn't going to take a loss. | ||
| Even his losses, he blamed on the Biden administration. | ||
| If the stock market drops two points, it's Biden's fault. | ||
| If he slip and fall, it's Biden's fault. | ||
| If he does his weave when he's speaking, it's Biden's fault. | ||
| Nothing's Trump's fault. | ||
| All right, Lonnie, we got the point. | ||
| We will have the chance to return to this topic a little later in the Washington Journal during our open forum segment, where any public policy issue that's on your mind, you can talk about it. | ||
| In the meantime, though, we're going to introduce you to a couple guests. | ||
| Coming up next is Darrell Davis. | ||
| He is a musician, but he's also the author of a book called The Klan Whisperer. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
On the day after Thanksgiving, today, C-SPAN will present a marathon lineup of episodes from our new weekly series, America's Book Club, hosted by acclaimed author and civic leader, David Rubenstein, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Eastern. | |
| Filmed at some of the nation's most iconic libraries and cultural institutions, America's Book Club features lively, thought-provoking conversations with leading authors, policymakers, business innovators, and cultural figures. | ||
| Featured guests include Stacey Schiff at the National Archives, John Grisham at the Library of Congress, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett at the Folger Shakespeare Library, David Grant, also at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Walter Isaacson at the National Archives, and Jose Andres at Catholic University. | ||
| Watch episodes from our new weekly series, America's Book Club, in a marathon the day after Thanksgiving, today, starting at 10 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| Also, head over to c-span.org to get the full schedule. | ||
| Today on C-SPAN's Ceasefire, at a time when finding common ground matters most in Washington, host Dasha Byrne sits down with Cornel West, Union Theological Seminary professor, and Robert George, Princeton University professor, for a civil dialogue on rising political polarization in the U.S. and top issues facing the country. | ||
| Bridging the Divide in American Politics. | ||
| Watch C-SPIRE today at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Yale constitutional law professor Akhil Reed Amar's second book in a trilogy is titled Born Equal, Remaking America's Constitution, 1840-1920. | ||
| In Professor Amar's introduction, he writes, Millions of Americans can recite by heart Lincoln's opening line at Gettysburg. | ||
| But how many of us understand it? | ||
| This sentence sits at the very center of this book. | ||
| Akhil Amar was born in 1958 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was raised in California after law school at Yale, clerked for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, and became a junior professor back at his alma mater at age 26. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Author Akhil Reed Ammar with his book, Born Equal: Remaking America's Constitution, 1840 to 1920, 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. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| And now on the Washington Journal, we want to introduce you to an author named Darrell Davis. | ||
| He is the author of this book, The Klan Whisperer. | ||
| But being an author is not his full-time job. | ||
| Mr. Davis, what do you generally do for a living? | ||
| Well, music is my profession, but trying to improve race relations is my obsession. | ||
| How did you get that obsession and how did it develop? | ||
| Well, I was a child of parents in the U.S. Foreign Service. | ||
| So I grew up as an American embassy kid traveling all over the world beginning at the age of three. | ||
| And it bothered me that I was treated better across the Pacific and Atlantic than I was in my own country. | ||
| So I sought to get to the roots of it. | ||
| How can you hate me when you don't even know me? | ||
| How do you get to the roots? | ||
| By interviewing and talking to people who profess that hate towards someone who does not look like them or who does not believe as they believe. | ||
| So I began seeking out members of the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, other white supremacists, and just, you know, your general racists on all sides. | ||
| So how do you begin a project like that? | ||
| First of all, you have to have a lot of nerve. | ||
| And secondly, how do you find somebody who's in the KKK and approach them? | ||
| Well, trust me, they're not hard to find. | ||
| Racists are not hard to find in this country. | ||
| But as far as nerve, no, you know, it really wasn't courage as much as it was curiosity. | ||
| I had an incident when I was 10 years old marching in a Cub Scout parade here in my own country. | ||
| I was the only black scout in the parade, and some of the spectators threw bottles and rocks at me. | ||
| And I didn't know why, because I had no precedent for that behavior. | ||
| You know, growing up a lot overseas, I did first grade, third grade, fifth grade, seventh grade, all in different countries. | ||
| And this is in the 1960s. | ||
| Now, get this, right? | ||
| My classmates overseas were from all over the world. | ||
| Anybody who had an embassy stationed where we had our U.S. embassy, all of their kids went to the same school. | ||
| So if you opened the door to my classroom, Peter, you would say, oh my goodness, you know, this is a United Nations of Little Kids, because that's exactly what it was. | ||
| But every time I'd come back home after my dad's assignment, I would either be in all black schools or black and white schools, meaning the still segregated or the newly integrated. | ||
| And I just didn't, you know, quite understand that. | ||
| So I sought the roots of this thing called racism. | ||
| Mr. Davis, walk us through an encounter with a member of the Ku Klux Klan. | ||
| Oh my goodness. | ||
| You know, I've been doing this for 45 years, so I've had many, many different ones. | ||
| And of course, a white supremacist or a Klan member, a Klansman or Klanswoman, is not stamped out of a standard cookie cutter. | ||
| You know, they come from all different walks of life, all different backgrounds, educational backgrounds, et cetera. | ||
| But, you know, to give you an example, you take a blood oath to join this group, and that becomes your family. | ||
| And you are surrounded by an echo chamber of people who have the same beliefs. | ||
| So you're constantly being fueled and pumped with this stuff that is simply not true. | ||
| So what you want to do is, well, let me take you to this. | ||
| Going around, I've been to 65 countries on six continents and all 50 states. | ||
| What I have learned is this. | ||
| No matter how far I've gone from our country, the United States, whether it's right next door to Canada or right next door to Mexico or halfway around the globe, every single person I've met is a human being. | ||
| And every human being on this planet wants these five core values in their lives. | ||
| Everyone wants to be loved. | ||
| Everyone wants to be respected. | ||
| We all want to be heard. | ||
| We all want to be treated fairly and truthfully. | ||
| And we all want the same things for our family as anybody else would want for their family. | ||
| And if we can learn to apply those five core values or any of those five values when we find ourselves in an adversarial situation or in a culture or society in which we're unfamiliar or uncomfortable, I'll guarantee you that your navigation of that situation, that culture, that society, will be much more smooth and much more positive. | ||
| So that's how I would approach these Klan members or white supremacists. | ||
| I would listen. | ||
| Do I agree with what they say? | ||
| No. | ||
| But I will give them the platform. | ||
| I will listen to them. | ||
| And in return, they will reciprocate and listen to me. | ||
| And what happens is I look for things that we have in common. | ||
| There are plenty of things we have in common. | ||
| Of course, there are plenty of things we have in difference. | ||
| When you find something in common, that gap between you begins to narrow. | ||
| And you talk for another five minutes, you found more in common. | ||
| Now you're here. | ||
| You are in a cordial relationship with your adversary. | ||
| You keep on talking, you get even closer because you found more in common, right? | ||
| And that is what causes a cognitive dissonance in that person's mind because he or she has found much more in common with you than they have in contrast. | ||
| And then the trivial things in contrast, such as skin color, or whether you go to a church, a synagogue, a mosque, or a temple, began to matter less and less. | ||
| And they began thinking, why did I hate that person in the first place? | ||
| So that's what happens. | ||
| I don't set out to convert anybody. | ||
| I set out to give them a different perception, and then they convert themselves. | ||
| And I end up with robes and hoods, swastika armbands, you know, you name it, I've got it. | ||
| Yeah, what do you plan on doing with that collection of garb? | ||
| Yes, well, I have a 501c3. | ||
| I plan on opening a museum. | ||
| And for what purpose? | ||
| To educate people. | ||
| It will be an interactive museum, and I will have lectures there, classes there. | ||
| And it'll also be a place, because, you know, one thing I've noticed in a lot of the lectures I give, I give lectures all over the world and all over this country. | ||
| And two to three out of every ten lectures I give, somebody will approach me after people have gone away from the podium from asking me questions or what have you, and I'm there by myself. | ||
| They will approach me and whisper to me, you know, my mother is in the Klan, or my dad's a neo-Nazi, you know, and I was raised that way. | ||
| I come from wherever they come from. | ||
| And now I'm here at University of, for example, fill in the blank. | ||
| And my girlfriend is Jewish or my boyfriend is black or my best friend is gay. | ||
| I can't bring them home. | ||
| My parents will kill me. | ||
| Or I can't, you know, or disown me. | ||
| And I can't tell my friend because they'll drop me. | ||
| So they have this secret that is burning on their chest and they need somebody to talk to. | ||
| My museum will offer that kind of service, sort of like, you know, an alcoholist or gambler's anonymous. | ||
| I'll have like a raceaholics anonymous for those people who are dealing with racism of their parents, of their spouses. | ||
| I know women who email me. | ||
| I don't even know them, right? | ||
| They email me and they'll say, you know, can you talk to my husband? | ||
| You know, before I married him, I had all these black girlfriends and now I can't have them over to the house because of his racism. | ||
| Things like that. | ||
| So I want an outlet for people like that dealing with these kinds of problems. | ||
| Daryl Davis, in your book, The Klan Whisperer, you talk about someone named Roger Kelly. | ||
| Who is he? | ||
| Roger Kelly was the, when I met him, he was the grand dragon of Maryland. | ||
| Grand Dragon means state leader in Klan terminology, what you and I, Peter, would call the governor. | ||
| Every Klan group has a grand dragon, the state leader, who oversees all the chapters within the state. | ||
| The imperial wizard is the national leader who oversees all the states in which there's a chapter. | ||
| You and I would call that person the president. | ||
| So when I met Roger Kelly, he was the grand dragon of Maryland. | ||
| A couple years later, he became an imperial wizard. | ||
| And then a few years after that, guess what? | ||
| He left the Klan because of that cognitive dissonance that resulted from our conversations and applying those five core values. | ||
| Today, I own his robe and hood. | ||
| What was that first meeting with Roger Kelly like? | ||
| It was pretty interesting. | ||
| First of all, how did you set it up? | ||
| Okay, well, I talked to a former Klansman, and I convinced him he was very reluctant. | ||
| I wanted him to introduce me to Mr. Kelly, and he was absolutely hands down, no, not going to do it. | ||
| He was fearful for his safety and for my safety of bringing a black man to the Grand Dragon. | ||
| So I persuaded him to give me Mr. Kelly's phone number and address, and I would handle it. | ||
| Well, he gave it to me on the condition that I not reveal to Mr. Kelly where I got it. | ||
| And he warned me. | ||
| He said, Daryl, do not fool with Roger Kelly. | ||
| He will kill you. | ||
| And I'm like, well, that's why I need to see him. | ||
| You know, why would he kill me? | ||
| Just because of the color of my skin. | ||
| That's the mentality I'm trying to understand. | ||
| So I had my secretary give Mr. Kelly a call, and she's white. | ||
| And I only mention that because it plays into the story, not because I care what color somebody is. | ||
| I figured if I called Mr. Kelly, he might pick up in my voice that I'm black. | ||
| And he would say, well, am I talking to you? | ||
| Click. | ||
| And my whole project would have ended before it ever got started. | ||
| My project was to go around the country, start here in Maryland, go up north, go down south, go to the Midwest, go to the West, and interview different Klan leaders and members and find out how can you hate me when you don't even know me? | ||
| What are the roots of racism? | ||
| How can we address it? | ||
| So I had her call because I knew that when he heard her voice on the phone, he would automatically know to his ear, that's a white woman on the end of the phone. | ||
| And I knew enough about the mentality that he would not automatically think that this white woman is working for a black man, especially a black man who's writing a book on the Ku Klux Klan, because they did not exist. | ||
| My book would become the first book written by a black author on the Ku Klux Klan from the perspective of in-person face-to-face interviews. | ||
| So I told her, do not tell Mr. Kelly that I'm black unless he asks. | ||
| Don't lie to him, but don't give him reason to ask. | ||
| So she understood. | ||
| She called. | ||
| He agreed to do the interview. | ||
| He didn't ask what color I was. | ||
| And so when we set up a date in a motel, and Mary, my secretary and I, got there several hours early, I gave her some money and sent her down the hall to get some soda pop out of the out of the machine, put it in the ice bucket, get it cold, fill it with ice, etc. | ||
| I had no idea what Mr. Kelly was going to do when he arrived. | ||
| Would he attack me? | ||
| Would he say, I'm not talking to you, and walk away? | ||
| Or would he come in the room and do the interview as he told Mary on the phone he would? | ||
| I didn't know what he was going to do, but I knew what I was going to do. | ||
| I was going to be hospitable and offer him a cold beverage as I would do to you or anybody coming to visit me. | ||
| So she got all that set up and we waited. | ||
| And right on time, there was a knock on the door. | ||
| And Mary hopped up and ran around the corner to open the door. | ||
| Now you cannot see who's in the room from the hallway if you're standing in the door. | ||
| You have to enter the room, turn to your right, and walk around the corner, and then you see who's in the room. | ||
| So I was seated at the lamp table. | ||
| I removed the lamp and put a chair on either side for Mr. Kelly and myself. | ||
| And so Mary opened the door and in walked what's called the Grand Nighthawk. | ||
| Nighthawk means bodyguard. | ||
| A Grand Nighthawk is a bodyguard to the Grand Dragon. | ||
| Imperial Nighthawk would be the bodyguard to the Imperial Wizard. | ||
| So in walks this Grand Nighthawk in military camouflage, the Ku Klux Klan emblem a patch on his chest, which is a red circle, white cross, and a red blood drop in the center of the chest. | ||
| Over on the other side were the letters KKK embroidered on the chest. | ||
| And on his cap, it said Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. | ||
| And on his hip, he had a semi-automatic and a holster, semi-automatic handgun, that is. | ||
| So he comes in, turns the corner, and sees me, and just freezes. | ||
| Well, Mr. Kelly was on the other side of the corner and did not realize that his Nighthawk had stopped. | ||
| So when he came around the corner, he slammed into the guy's back and knocked the guy forward. | ||
| And now they both are stumbling around the room trying to regain their balance and looking all around. | ||
| And I'm just sitting there looking at them. | ||
| And I can read their faces. | ||
| I knew what they were thinking. | ||
| They were thinking, did the desk clerk give us the wrong room number or is this an ambush? | ||
| So I stood up and I displayed my palms. | ||
| So I show I had nothing in my hands and I approached Mr. Kelly. | ||
| I extended my right hand. | ||
| I said, hi, Mr. Kelly. | ||
| I'm Darrell Davis. | ||
| Well, he shook my hand, as did the Nighthawk. | ||
| So far, so good. | ||
| I said, please, please come on and have a seat. | ||
| So he had a seat. | ||
| And we began doing this interview. | ||
| I had a little bag beside me containing the Bible and some blank cassettes to record. | ||
| And every time he'd make a biblical reference, because the Ku Klux Klan claims to be a Christian organization, and they claim that the Bible preaches racial separation. | ||
| Now, I've read the Bible, and I've never seen that. | ||
| So I wanted to be able to reach down, pull up my Bible, and say, here, Mr. Kelly, please show me chapter and verse where it says blacks and whites must be separate. | ||
| So every time I'd reach down to pull out a blank cassette or the Bible, the Nighthawk would reach up. | ||
| He never pulled his gun. | ||
| He would rest his hand on the butt of the gun. | ||
| So, you know, which I understood, you know, that's his job. | ||
| He's trying to protect his boss. | ||
| So, how did the end of the meeting, how long was the meeting finished? | ||
| It went on for about three hours. | ||
| I figured it wouldn't go on, you know, for more than 45 minutes or so. | ||
| But he was fascinating. | ||
| He was learning stuff from me. | ||
| I was learning things from him. | ||
| But now we had one little tense moment. | ||
| You know, we're talking some things we agree upon, other things we disagree upon. | ||
| And we were just casually talking. | ||
| Now, after about 45 minutes or an hour, the Nighthawk stopped reaching for his gun every time I'd reached into the bag. | ||
| He finally realized there was no threat in the bag. | ||
| But a little over an hour into the interview, there was a very strange, very quick, short noise, like a. | ||
| And we all jumped. | ||
| And because it was so out of context, the noise was so short and so fast that my ear could not discern what it was. | ||
| And I jumped up and hit the table. | ||
| I'm getting ready to come across that table and grab the Nighthawk and grab Mr. Kelly and slam them down to the ground and take away the Nighthawk's weapon. | ||
| Because it's my job to protect myself and my secretary. | ||
| Like it's the Nighthawk's job to protect himself and his grand dragon. | ||
| I figured Mr. Kelly had made the noise because I didn't make the noise. | ||
| And all I could hear in the back of my head was, Daryl, don't fool with Roger Kelly. | ||
| He will kill you, what the other former Klansman had told me. | ||
| So I was prepared. | ||
| And when I hit the table, I'm looking right into Mr. Kelly's eyes. | ||
| I didn't say a word. | ||
| He could read my eyes. | ||
| My eyes were saying to him, what did you just do? | ||
| Well, guess what? | ||
| His eyes were fixated on my eyes. | ||
| His eyes were saying to me, what did you just do? | ||
| And the Nighthawk's back on his gun, looking at both of us like, what did either one of y'all just do? | ||
| Well, Mary realized what had happened. | ||
| She was sitting on the dresser next to me to my left because there were no more chairs in the room. | ||
| She began explaining it when it happened again, and we all began laughing. | ||
| What happened was the ice bucket with the cans of soda was sitting to her left and the ice had begun to melt and the cans of soda were cascading down the ice. | ||
| That was it, you know? | ||
| And we all became fearful of each other because of our ignorance as to what was going on. | ||
| The lesson taught that day, I won't say it was learned that day, that would come later, but the lesson taught that day is this. | ||
| All because some foreign entity of which we were ignorant, that being the bucket of ice Kansas soda, I mean, yeah, we knew it was over there, but we'd long forgotten about it. | ||
| All because some foreign entity of which we were ignorant entered into our little comfort zone via the noise that it made without our knowledge, we became fearful and accusatory of each other. | ||
| The lesson taught is this. | ||
| Ignorance breeds fear. | ||
| We fear those things of which we're ignorant, those things we don't understand. | ||
| If we don't keep that fear in check, that fear in turn, Peter, will escalate into hatred because we hate the things that frighten us. | ||
| If we don't keep that hatred in check, that in turn will escalate to destruction. | ||
| We want to destroy the things that we hate. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Because they frighten us. | ||
| But guess what? | ||
| At the end of the day, they may have been harmless and we were simply ignorant. | ||
| So we saw the whole chain almost unravel to completion, the last component being destruction. | ||
| Had I pounced across the table and hurt one of them, or had they shot me or my secretary? | ||
| Fortunately, it stopped just short of that, and we continued with the conversation for another couple of hours, and we got along fine. | ||
| We disagreed on some things, agreed on others. | ||
| And over a period of time, over a few years, like I said, he became Imperial Wizard, but the whole time, it was causing a cognitive dissonance, and that gap was narrowing to the point where he decided he was wrong. | ||
| And not only did he leave the Klan, he did not just hand it over to his second-in-command. | ||
| He shut down 13 chapters in 13 states. | ||
| The book is called The Klan Whisperer, the author, Darrell Davis. | ||
| And now it's time to hear your voices as well. | ||
| Edward, Kalamazoo, Michigan, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Edward. | ||
| You're on with author and musician, Darrell Davis. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hello. | |
| I'm glad you're on today. | ||
| Good morning, Edward. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I might buy the book. | |
| I think we have an enormous, I think we have an enormous race problem in the United States. | ||
| I think it's worse than I had imagined. | ||
| I mean, I think this anti-immigrant fever is mostly based on race. | ||
| In other words, people don't like, you know, brown, black immigrants coming to the country. | ||
| And I think that Trump appeals to that, you know, hatred and resentment of foreigners and non-white people. | ||
| And I think that's what he's basing a lot of the presidential policies on racism and anti-immigrant policies. | ||
| But let me just mention real quick: I didn't realize how deeply embedded slavery was in the United States until, I don't know, maybe it was 10 years ago when I heard about this project. | ||
| Is it Project 1619 or 1609? | ||
| 1619. | ||
|
unidentified
|
History. | |
| 1619. | ||
| I wasn't sure I had to write that. | ||
| Yeah, 1619. | ||
| Now, I never learned this in school, but slavery began almost immediately with the colonization of North America. | ||
| So, and I thought, how long did we have slavery? | ||
| We had slavery almost, and so, yeah, from 1619, right? | ||
| They imported slaves into, what was it, Virginia, correct? | ||
| Into the colony. | ||
| Hey, Edward, we've got to get some more calls in here. | ||
| Let's go ahead and conclude this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah, I just say that slavery based on racism has been embedded into the country. | |
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| We got the point. | ||
| Darrell Davis. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| And thank you, Ed, for your call. | ||
| Yes, you know, we don't learn a whole lot of things in school that we should learn. | ||
| I'm 67 years old. | ||
| I graduated high school in 76 and college in 1980. | ||
| And I went to one of the top-rated counties in this country for high schools. | ||
| And in our history book, we did not learn that we had internment camps in this country for Japanese Americans. | ||
| I did not learn that until I was in college, and I was incredulous about it. | ||
| And I said, no way. | ||
| My teacher said yes. | ||
| And I went and asked my parents, and they said yes. | ||
| Why was it not in the history books? | ||
| All right. | ||
| Because we have a lot of shameful things that we try to erase, rewrite, omit, deny. | ||
| And we need, every country has history, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the shameful. | ||
| And we need to turn those cards over, address them all, and then move on. | ||
| And that's why you didn't learn certain things when you were in school about slavery and other things, tragedies in this country. | ||
| Everett is calling in from Colorado, Republican line. | ||
| Everett, please go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning to you. | |
| Good morning, Everett. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Davis, you are something special, and you deserve a medal, if nothing else. | |
| I grew up in western Colorado, so it was primarily a white area. | ||
| But I grew up in a Catholic school, and the nuns would teach us basically not to judge the other people. | ||
| And so I've always carried that with me. | ||
| Don't judge a book by its cover. | ||
| Try and find out what's on the inside and learn from that person or book. | ||
| I tried to study and learn about the Tuskegee Airmen, and I had a chance to meet Roosevelt Greer one time at a youth sports event that was going on here in Grand Junction, Colorado. | ||
| And that man was amazing. | ||
| He was a huge, huge man. | ||
| And I had a chance to shake his stick, and he gave me a little piece of paper, you know, because I was having problems with maybe my religious orientation or whatever. | ||
| And he gave me this little piece of paper. | ||
| I still cherish that more than anything. | ||
| I'd love to meet you. | ||
| You're welcome in my house anytime you can reach Western Colorado. | ||
| I appreciate that, Everett, Grand Junction, Colorado. | ||
| Any comment for that caller? | ||
| Do you hear that a lot from people, Darrell Davis, when you get a chance to speak? | ||
| I do, but I also have my share of detractors, but I certainly appreciate Everett's comments. | ||
| And I've played and lectured all over Colorado, including Grand Junction. | ||
| So next time I'm out there, I hope he will come out and we can shake hands and perhaps grab a meal together. | ||
| So what would a detractor say to you? | ||
| Well, how can you sit? | ||
| Well, it depends upon who they are. | ||
| They don't understand why I would sit down with a Klansman. | ||
| You know, they work hard to get 20 steps forward and I put them 40 steps back by sitting down with the enemy. | ||
| No, I sit down with the enemy and we become friends and they end up relinquishing their memorabilia, their paraphernalia, their regalia to me. | ||
| And now they come out on my stage and lecture with me against their former group. | ||
| And they attempt to de-radicalize people still in that movement and prevent young people from going down that road. | ||
| So when people say to me, you know, why are you sitting down with the enemy? | ||
| You know, you're a sellout. | ||
| You're a traitor to your own race and blah, blah, blah. | ||
| I say to them, well, how many clan robes have you collected? | ||
| And then they shut up. | ||
| Next call, Tom, Richmond Hills, Georgia, Independent Line. | ||
| Please go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Mr. Davis. | |
| Hi, Tom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm very impressed with your understanding. | |
| And I wish you'd come to Savannah sometime and give us a talk here. | ||
| Now, I just wanted to make the point that the laws of this country have not been racist for a long time. | ||
| The racism that exists, with little exception, resides with the race-obsessed in the Democratic Party and media who use the injustices of the distant past for purely political purposes. | ||
| In a country of 350 million people, you're always going to find some pretty crazy people. | ||
| It just takes a lot of people to make a world. | ||
| But, you know, the attitudes change slowly. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, you're right. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Tom, I appreciate your call. | ||
| It's not just the fact that we need to change people. | ||
| We also need to change the culture that produces that mentality in people on all sides. | ||
| Daryl Davis, we've been talking about the Ku Klux Klan, but how prevalent is the KKK today, and are there other groups out there? | ||
| Yes, there are plenty of other groups. | ||
| You know, Peter, when I first started this work, about 40, it would be 46 years next year in a few months. | ||
| But when I first started that, there were basically three groups around. | ||
| There was the KKK, neo-Nazis, and what were called white power skinheads. | ||
| Today you have a whole plethora of them. | ||
| The alt-right, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the Vanguard, the National Alliance, in addition to the ones I just mentioned. | ||
| And all of them are saying, come join us, come join us. | ||
| We're going to take back our country. | ||
| Well, people who are afraid of their identity being erased because of the demographic shift in this country, they run and join these groups. | ||
| And when the group fails to take back our country, some of them get antsy and they say, you know what, if the Klan can't do it or the neo-Nazis can't do it, I'll do it myself. | ||
| And they walk into a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, and murder nine people doing Bible study. | ||
| They walk into the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, murder 11 Jewish people, into the Walmart in El Paso, Texas, murder 23 Hispanic people, the Buffalo grocery store, on and on. | ||
| The Oak Creek Sikh Indian Temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, murder seven Sikh Indians doing their religious services. | ||
| These people are called lone wolves. | ||
| And here's what's going on in our country, Peter, and everybody listening. | ||
| I learned this back in 1982 from the then head of the American Nazi Party. | ||
| He took over after George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder and original head, was murdered by one of his own Nazis. | ||
| But Matt Cole, K-O-E-H-L, became the commander of the American Nazi Party. | ||
| And I had a couple conversations with him, once when I was 15, and then again later on as an adult. | ||
| And he told me something. | ||
| He told me a lot of lies. | ||
| But one thing he told me was true. | ||
| They, white supremacists, are very concerned about the year 2042, which is only 16 years from now. | ||
| Because, you know, if you look, the U.S. Census is taken every decade. | ||
| Like I said, I'm 67. | ||
| When I was a kid, the black population in this country was 12%. | ||
| Native Americans, 1%. | ||
| Latino, Hispanic Americans, 3%. | ||
| Asian Pacific Islander Americans, almost 6%. | ||
| Whites, 86%, 87%. | ||
| This is happening every decade. | ||
| The last census was taken in 2020, and white people are at 59% today. | ||
| Blacks remain at 12%, 12.9, so they say 13%. | ||
| Native Americans remain at 1%. | ||
| Asian Pacific Islanders have almost doubled to 6%. | ||
| So if you take 12% black, 17% now of Latino Hispanic people, that right there by itself is 29% non-white. | ||
| This is happening. | ||
| And what people who I deal with tell me, Daryl, I don't want my grandkids to be brown. | ||
| They call it the Browning of America or white genocide through miscegenation. | ||
| Now, while there are plenty of white people in this country who don't care about that, say, hey, that's evolution, doesn't bother me, no big deal. | ||
| But when 2042 hits, it's going to be 50-50. | ||
| For the first time in this country, 50% white, 50% non-white. | ||
| Between 2045 and 2050, it's going to flip. | ||
| And for the first time in the history of this country, whites will be the minority. | ||
| And that is very troubling to some people, which is one reason why Donald Trump wanted Canada to become the 51st state in order to get that gap there again. | ||
| Deborah, Ohio, Republican. | ||
| Please go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| What a privilege to speak with you, and thank you for C-SPAN. | ||
| Good morning, Deborah, and thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I have an experience I'd like to share. | |
| I lived in a basically mostly white middle-class neighborhood. | ||
| It just so happened that my neighbors were African-American. | ||
| So they had little boys, two little boys the same age as my one son. | ||
| And so, you know, my husband and I just didn't believe in explaining to a young child differences. | ||
| We just believe that you should allow children to experience friends and people and let them ask you questions. | ||
| So my son played with this little boy. | ||
| They did all the things little boys do. | ||
| Went in and out of the house. | ||
| We went to the movies, did pizza, all of that. | ||
| Not once did my son, five years old, ask me why his friend had black skin. | ||
| So then my son goes to first grade the next year. | ||
| And of course he seeks out his neighbors to play with during recess. | ||
| And some child told my son that his friend had been a slave, you know, or something like that. | ||
| Well, my son was so upset. | ||
| He was so upset because he felt, you know, it was hurtful to my son that somebody would talk bad about his friend. | ||
| And so what I explained to my son when he came home that day was that some people believe that there's a difference, you know, that that makes a difference. | ||
| But your dad and I do not believe that. | ||
| And I just told my son, you get to pick your friends. | ||
| And you pick your friends based on how well you all play together. | ||
| And that's how you decide who your friends are. | ||
| But you get to choose. | ||
| Thank you for sharing that story, Deborah. | ||
| Any response, Mr. Davis? | ||
| Yeah, thank you, Deborah, very much. | ||
| And I've seen that happen. | ||
| And I get it, you know, where we allow children and discover things because, you know, people are not born racist. | ||
| It's an acquired thing. | ||
| It's something that is learned. | ||
| And what can be learned can be unlearned. | ||
| So yes, you let your kid pick and choose their friends, you know, regardless of color, religion, disability, what have you. | ||
| And then when they began questioning, you answer them. | ||
| But in terms of your child being hurt, what happened there, apparently, from what I gather from your conversation, is that the other kids' parents planted this information in their child who then told your child about his friend being a slave. | ||
| Because, you know, some five or six-year-old kid doesn't come up with that. | ||
| So that comes from home. | ||
| And, you know, we all need to address these things in school. | ||
| While we're in school, we all pretty much are treated the same. | ||
| But when we graduate and we get out beyond the perimeter of our school campus, whether it's high school or college, things are different. | ||
| You know, women are being mistreated or being considered second-class citizens, or because you're Muslim, or because you're Jewish, or because you're white or black or whatever. | ||
| We all experience these things that we did not experience in our school. | ||
| So we have to kind of balance where we let our children find out things on their own and answer questions, but also where we prepare them to deal with things they may not have experienced in school, but they certainly will encounter once they graduate. | ||
| Darrell Davis, has your life been threatened? | ||
| Yes, it has. | ||
| Can you give an example? | ||
| I don't want to get too much into it because some people had to get hurt. | ||
| And, you know, don't want to get too much into that. | ||
| But it happens every now and then. | ||
| Fortunately, fewer than, you know, fewer and far between for me. | ||
| But, you know, when you're going into a situation like that, you can expect that to be in the air. | ||
| And sometimes it will manifest itself. | ||
| And I've seen it a few times. | ||
| But it has not deterred me because I get rejuvenated, I get elevated. | ||
| You know, I love it when I see the light bulb come on in someone's mind and they renounce and denounce that ideology and are willing to come out and talk about it and how wrong they were and try to bring some of their former members out of that ideology and prevent young people from doing it. | ||
| So I'm willing to take those risks. | ||
| Have any of these members or people that you've met with of the racist groups ever attended one of your concerts later on? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| In fact, I've met a few of them before I knew they were racist or whatever at my concerts. | ||
| But yes, everybody likes music, Peter, even racists. | ||
| So, yes. | ||
| Richard, Augusta, Georgia, Democrat, please go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning and the guests. | ||
| You notice the subliminal message? | ||
| If you watch football sports like I do, you saw the pregame story about the biracial couple and the grandparents having Thanksgiving dinner together last night. | ||
| And the problem I have with sports announcers, they're saying there's a jailbreak on that fantastic play. | ||
| What kind of subliminal message is that? | ||
| And also to the guest host, remember in April last year, I talked to you about the dictator in the White House. | ||
| And now we have the dictator Supreme Court that eroding the civil rights laws, such as the voting rights bill, Section 5 and Section 2, and affirmative action laws, education. | ||
| And we have, again, like I said, the subliminal messages that I saw, it was great that before the Baltimore game last night, they showed the Thanksgiving dinner between the biracial family and the grandparents of the daughter who was white there with the black family and all breaking bread together as one should be able to do in a homogeneous society in America. | ||
| To the guest host again, last April, you had Mr. Cohen on the show, and I told you about the dictator in the White House. | ||
| That's Richard in Augusta, Georgia. | ||
| Let's move on to Steve in Charlotte, North Carolina, Independent Line. | ||
| Hi, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I grew up in Memphis when King was killed, and it's still one of the most tumultuous periods of my life. | ||
| And I learned about racism through the schools, really. | ||
| I mean, they were segregated at that time. | ||
| So I just, I'm trying to figure out all this stuff because I know I wasn't taught to be a racist. | ||
| And I know it's learned. | ||
| But when it comes down to the absolute animosity and hate to kill someone like King, I still don't understand. | ||
| Possibly you have some insight on that. | ||
| Well, yeah, thank you. | ||
| It boils down to pure hatred, as you said. | ||
| And consider the fact this, that you said that schools were segregated when you were in school in 1968 when Dr. King was killed. | ||
| He was killed, murdered, assassinated on April 4th, 1968. | ||
| Consider this fact. | ||
| Desegregation was passed by our U.S. Supreme Court in 1954, 1954. | ||
| So, and still, in 1968, schools were still segregated. | ||
| Yes, you know, things did not integrate or desegregate overnight. | ||
| Even today, in 2025, in some parts of our country, some places are still struggling with integration. | ||
| In Prince Edward County, Virginia, when desegregation was passed, Virginia has over 100 counties. | ||
| Prince Edward County refused to integrate. | ||
| They shut down every public school in Prince Edward County, not for five days, not for five weeks, not for five months, for five years. | ||
| Just Google Prince Edward County, Virginia desegregation. | ||
| Think about missing five years of school. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Think back to just a couple years ago when your kids or your friends' kids had to go to Zoom school for two years. | ||
| We're lucky we had Zoom. | ||
| Some kids did okay, some kids, not so good, right? | ||
| But at least we had Zoom. | ||
| Back then in 1954, you didn't have Zoom and schools shutting down for five years. | ||
| When I go down to Prince Edward County, I meet a lot of people my age and some younger and older, et cetera. | ||
| But they missed five years of education, people who grew up there. | ||
| So you're finding a deficiency in mathematical skills, in English grammar, reading, and writing, et cetera. | ||
| So why is it that our country takes so long to integrate when we all are here together to make this a great country? | ||
| We cannot deny the contributions of every person in this country, every background of every person in this country. | ||
| Jeff's in Indianapolis. | ||
| Jeff, please go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, gentlemen. | |
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Davis, I'm a big fan of yours. | |
| And keep up. | ||
| I understand there's a movie in the works. | ||
| I don't know if that's coming through or not, but I heard talk that there's a movie being based on your life. | ||
| So anyway, I want to respond to a caller. | ||
| I think he's from Georgia, and he said that the Democrats were the party of racism. | ||
| You know, Dr. King, since we're speaking about Dr. King, once said that there's 51 states in America, the 51st state being the state of the now. | ||
| And that caller from Georgia is a great example of that. | ||
| Yes, you're right. | ||
| History is important. | ||
| And the great nations don't run from their past. | ||
| You know, history is about the good, the bad, and the ugly, and the shameful. | ||
| And the reason we have, we teach history is to make sure we don't repeat those mistakes again. | ||
| You know, I hear this talk, especially from the far right, talking about, well, we're making white kids feel guilty about slavery and the genocide against Native Americans. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, it's about education. | |
| In Germany, they're taught to learn about the Holocaust. | ||
| And German kids are not feeling guilty. | ||
| They feel very enlightened and say, you know what? | ||
| And next time a clown like Adolf Hitler shows up, maybe we shouldn't listen to him, you know. | ||
| Also, you know, and history is important because I learned recently that Columbus Day is rooted in racism. | ||
| At one time, they did, you know, because of a lynching that took place in New Orleans, and it caused white Anglo-Saxon Protestants didn't consider Italians white. | ||
| Mr. Davis, what do you think about it, Nick Powinter, who is this biracial neo-Nazis? | ||
| I know that, is there like an affirmative action thing going on? | ||
| Jeff, thank you. | ||
| We'll get an answer from Darrell Davis on that. | ||
| Okay, I don't agree with anybody of any background who promotes supremacy of any kind, whether it's white, black, or otherwise. | ||
| So I hope that answers that question. | ||
| And yes, you know, Columbus Day is rooted in racism. | ||
| You know, we had to fight for decades, decades, to get Martin Luther King Day to become a federal holiday. | ||
| And when you consider this, there is only one American man who has a holiday to himself today, and that man is black. | ||
| That's Martin Luther King. | ||
| And that's why it took so long to get that holiday. | ||
| When I was growing up as a child, as a kid, in school, we had two white guys. | ||
| Each one had a holiday to himself. | ||
| Young people won't remember this. | ||
| We had George Washington Day and we had Abraham Lincoln Day. | ||
| And so two white guys each had a holiday to himself. | ||
| And then the government figured we had too many holidays. | ||
| So they combined Lincoln Day and Washington Day into one day and called it President's Day. | ||
| All right. | ||
| But they did not want to give Martin Luther King a holiday to himself. | ||
| But yet, Christopher Columbus, who is not an American, has a holiday all to himself. | ||
| Christopher Columbus was a murderer, a pillager, and a rapist. | ||
| And so were his crew, the Nino, Pinto, and Santa Maria that came across the ocean to discover the new world or what have you. | ||
| How do you discover someplace when you get there, people are already there? | ||
| It's beyond me. | ||
| But nonetheless, we gave that holiday without any reservation, without any problems, anything like that, to somebody who committed those crimes against humanity, but yet we tried to deny for decades to give a holiday to Dr. King, who neither raped, pillaged, or murdered anybody. | ||
| He gave his life bringing everybody together. | ||
| Darrell Davis, what's your take on the removal of Confederate monuments and, in some cases, the putting back up of Confederate monuments? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I'm only speaking for myself. | ||
| I don't speak for anybody else. | ||
| But I will say this. | ||
| We went to war against Great Britain, and we beat Great Britain, which is why we celebrate the 4th of July. | ||
| Now, the second highest percentage of white people in this country, white Americans, are of British descent. | ||
| The first highest, the highest number of whites, are of German descent. | ||
| Now, these white Americans of British descent, they don't run out and build statues to King George III or fly the Union Jack. | ||
| We love Great Britain. | ||
| They're our allies, and they can go there and see their third cousin removed. | ||
| We're all friends now, right? | ||
| But the loser does not get to build his statues or fly his flag on the winner's property. | ||
| In 1941, we went to war with Japan, all right, because they bombed Pearl Harbor. | ||
| There are plenty of Japanese Americans in this country. | ||
| They are as American as you and I or anybody else, right? | ||
| Yet we treated them wrong. | ||
| We put them in internment camps. | ||
| They gave up their Japanese citizenship and became Americans. | ||
| Now today we are allies with Japan, but these Japanese Americans do not run out and build statues to Emperor Hirohito and fly the Japanese flag. | ||
| We went to war against Germany in World War II. | ||
| The majority of white Americans are of German descent. | ||
| They don't run out and build statues to Adolf Eichmann or Joseph Goebbels or Joseph Mengele or Adolf Hitler for that matter, or fly swastika flags unless they're neo-Nazis. | ||
| The loser does not get to build his statues or fly his flags on the winner's property. | ||
| Now, to your question, I believe those things should be taken down. | ||
| The flags, the monuments, et cetera, they should not be ripped down and destroyed. | ||
| They should be put in a Confederate memorial museum or a Confederate memorial park, and people who want to honor them can go there and do whatever they want to do, plant flowers, kneel, whatever they want to do, and honor their ancestors, okay? | ||
| My ancestors, okay, I'm a descendant of slaves. | ||
| My ancestors fought in the Confederacy. | ||
| My parents are from Virginia. | ||
| My grandparents are from Virginia. | ||
| My great-grandparents were from North Carolina, and their parents were slaves. | ||
| All right, so slaves had to fight for their slave masters. | ||
| So those in the southern states fought for the Confederacy. | ||
| Do I honor the Confederacy? | ||
| No, I do not. | ||
| Okay, but I honor my ancestors. | ||
| And, you know, it's your prerogative. | ||
| If you want to fly that flag, go ahead and fly it. | ||
| But it should not be flown in a public place, nor should statues be erected. | ||
| In fact, at the end of the Civil War, which ended in 1865, there were no statues, no statues to Confederate soldiers. | ||
| The first ones appeared in the 1920s, and there were only a handful of them. | ||
| The majority of statues that you see today of Confederate soldiers were made in the 1960s as a slap in the face to integration. | ||
| So they weren't even, you know, statues from the Confederacy era. | ||
| Darrell Davis has been our guest. | ||
| His book is The Klan Whisperer. | ||
| If you want to find out his music schedule as well, DarylDavis.com. | ||
| Mr. Davis, pleasure to meet you. | ||
| Please come back. | ||
| Peter, thank you very much, and I will do that. | ||
| And happy belated Thanksgiving to all of you all out there. | ||
| Coming up in just a minute, we're going to be talking with public historian and blogger Jason Steinauer. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
On the day after Thanksgiving, today, C-SPAN will present a marathon lineup of episodes from our new weekly series, America's Book Club, hosted by acclaimed author and civic leader, David Rubenstein, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Eastern. | |
| Filmed at some of the nation's most iconic libraries and cultural institutions, America's Book Club features lively, thought-provoking conversations with leading authors, policymakers, business innovators, and cultural figures. | ||
| Featured guests include Stacey Schiff at the National Archives, John Grisham at the Library of Congress, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett at the Folger Shakespeare Library, David Grant, also at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Walter Isaacson at the National Archives, and Jose Andres at Catholic University. | ||
| Watch episodes from our new weekly series, America's Book Club, in a marathon the day after Thanksgiving. | ||
| Today, starting at 10 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| Also, head over to c-span.org to get the full schedule. | ||
| Today on C-SPAN's Ceasefire, at a time when finding common ground matters most in Washington, host Dasha Byrne sits down with Cornel West, Union Theological Seminary professor, and Robert George, Princeton University professor, for a civil dialogue on rising political polarization in the U.S. and top issues facing the country. | ||
| Bridging the divide in American politics. | ||
| Watch Ceasefire today at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Get C-SPAN wherever you are with C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app that puts you at the center of democracy, live and on demand. | ||
| Keep up with the day's biggest events with live streams of floor proceedings and hearings from the U.S. Congress, White House events, the courts, campaigns, and more from the world of politics, all at your fingertips. | ||
| Catch the latest episodes of Washington Journal. | ||
| Find scheduling information for C-SPAN's TV and radio networks, plus a variety of compelling podcasts. | ||
| The C-SPAN Now app is available at the Apple Store and Google Play. | ||
| Download it for free today. | ||
| C-SPAN, democracy unfiltered. | ||
| Sunday night on C-SPAN's Q&A. | ||
| White House trade advisor Peter Navarro went to prison in 2024, convicted of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the January 6th Committee after being found guilty on two counts. | ||
| In his new book, I Went to Prison So You Won't Have To, Peter Navarro lays out the Justice Department's case, his arrest and trial, and what it was like for him behind bars. | ||
| People think you're in a dorm rather than a cell. | ||
| It's like everybody told me there that they'd rather be in a cell because you only have to worry about one other guy. | ||
| You know, there's a thing called the lock, lock in the sock, right? | ||
| You take a padlock, you throw it in a sock, and a lot of rough justice goes on like that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
White House trade advisor and author Peter Navarro, Sunday night at 8 Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. You can listen to Q&A wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app. | |
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| And now on your screen is Jason Steinauer. | ||
| He is the author of this book, History Disrupted, How Social Media and the World Wide Web Have Changed the Past. | ||
| He describes himself as a public historian, which is what, Mr. Steinauer? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Someone who has a background in public history, museums, archives, libraries. | |
| I worked at the Library of Congress for a while. | ||
| Spent my entire career thinking about how the public interfaces with history, learns about history, and how we as historians can better communicate history with public audiences. | ||
| Well, we are moving into America 250, and C-SPAN is the official media partner of the American 250 Commission. | ||
| But how are you viewing this? | ||
| Is it a celebration? | ||
| Is it a commemoration? | ||
| Is it an exploration? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so for viewers who are unaware, 1776 to 2026, 2026, 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. | |
| Obviously, American independence comes later. | ||
| The war with Great Britain doesn't end for another few years. | ||
| The Constitution comes after that. | ||
| So this anniversary is first and foremost about a declaration. | ||
| And so I think that's interesting for us to think about in 2026. | ||
| A declaration about who we are, who we want to be, who we've been, where we're headed in the future. | ||
| That's kind of how I've been thinking about it. | ||
| I think it's a good moment for introspection. | ||
| I think it's a good moment for looking backward, taking stock of where we are now, and looking forward, thinking about what type of country and nation we want to be in the future. | ||
| And I think that could take a number of different approaches. | ||
| There could be celebrations, there could be commemorations, there could be chances for more solemn occurrences. | ||
| I think part of the beauty of this country is the diversity and the complexity with which we honor and think about our past. | ||
| And I think this is a great opportunity for a wide variety of commemorations, celebrations, etc. | ||
| So it's been going on already in 2025, the America 250 commemorations, celebrations, etc. | ||
| We've had a commemoration of the Army, the Navy, the Marines. | ||
| What's your take? | ||
| And those have been very, you know, very patriotic, very rah-rah. | ||
| But what's your take on those? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think in general, you know, I've been thinking about AmeriCoot 250 as sort of an occasion to get really local. | |
| I would encourage people to think local. | ||
| There's been a lot of conversation over the past decade about the American national story, and certain political actors have tried to persuade us to see the national story this way or that way. | ||
| But America is a very, very diverse and complex place, and there are millions of American stories. | ||
| And I think this upcoming anniversary or the anniversary that we've already begun is an opportunity to drill down and be very local in how we think about this. | ||
| And for a viewer, in a very practical way, there are 21,000, more than 21,000 history organizations in the United States, in every community across the country. | ||
| There are local history museums, local libraries, local archives. | ||
| historic cemeteries, historic markers, historic buildings that tell some aspect of the American story. | ||
| And I think 2026 is an opportunity to really, number one, support those places by attending, contributing, donating if you're able. | ||
| But number two, to really connect with some of those places in our own communities. | ||
| And so, yes, there will be national celebrations. | ||
| There'll be a national celebration on the mall. | ||
| There'll be a national celebration in Philadelphia. | ||
| We've already had parades, as you mentioned. | ||
| But for me, I think the beauty and the value of this coming year is really the opportunity to connect with some of these local stories and to see American history in all its complexity, in all its diversity, in all its nuance, and even contradictions. | ||
| I think some of that displays itself really well in our local history organizations. | ||
| When you look back, Mr. Steinhauer, at the bicentennial celebrations, what's your take on those? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the bicentennial in the history profession was actually a boon because it actually enabled many of these local history organizations to generate funding, to generate attendance, and to help them prepare for the coming decades in terms of programming and infrastructure. | |
| Actually, there's some really good books about the 1976 celebrations, and one of the outcomes of that was a real boon, a little boom, excuse me, in local history. | ||
| And so as we've led up to this anniversary, there has been some optimism that maybe that could happen again. | ||
| Now, there have been some challenges. | ||
| Obviously, the COVID-19 pandemic set back the museum attendance, and there's obviously been cuts in federal funding, which have really hurt local history organizations. | ||
| But there's still time. | ||
| There's still an opportunity. | ||
| So I think if we want to repeat something that was very successful from 1976 in 2026, it's really investing locally with our attendance, with our eyeballs, and with, when we're able, our investments and our dollars, strengthening our local communities by ensuring these local history organizations can succeed and thrive, not just in 2026, but beyond. | ||
| In 2021, History Disrupted came out, how social media and the World Wide Web Have Changed the Past. | ||
| What do you mean by the subtitle in your book? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, I used to work at... | |
| And I think Mr. Steinhauer just froze up there in New York, and we will get him back in just a minute. | ||
| But we'll get an answer to that question. | ||
| But we're going to be talking about America 250, the celebration of the semi-quincentennial signing of the Declaration of Independence. | ||
| We're also going to be talking about how history is taught, how public history is taught. | ||
| What should we know about our history? | ||
| And we're going to be talking about that with Mr. Steinhauer as soon as we reconnect with him. | ||
| Numbers are on the screen. | ||
| 202 is the area code 748-8000. | ||
| For those of you in the East and Central time zone, 748-8001, if you live in the Mountain and Pacific time zones. | ||
| And for independence, 748-8002. | ||
| You can go ahead and start dialing in now. | ||
| We'll get to those calls in just a minute. | ||
| Mr. Steinhauer is back. | ||
| When we lost you, Mr. Steinhauer, I had asked you about the subtitle of your book, History Disrupted, How Social Media and the World Wide Web Have Changed the Past. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, in short, I became very interested in how the devices that we use every day, the news feeds, the social media feeds that we interact with on a daily basis, how those were shaping people's opinions about history. | |
| and where and how people were learning historical information or encountering historical information on those devices and on those platforms. | ||
| So I began to explore it and it became a really fascinating story, much more complex than I had imagined. | ||
| And the result was the book that you mentioned, How Social Media, History Disrupted, How Social Media and the World Wide Web Have Changed the Past. | ||
| And it turns out that social media, the World Wide Web, sites like Wikipedia, they've had quite an influence on how we think we learn about the past or what we think we know about the past. | ||
| Well, you said it's you used the word complex. | ||
| What do you mean by that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
In this context, the platforms that we engage with every day have billions and billions of pieces of what I call e-history on them. | |
| And one of the questions that I wanted to answer was why do we see certain types of e-history in our news feeds and why are there some that we never ever see, right? | ||
| Why will you see stories about the American Revolution, but not stories about the Iraq War or about the Persian Gulf War? | ||
| And so I began to look into it. | ||
| And the more I looked into it, the more I realized it was a complex set of factors that determined that outcome. | ||
| It was the design of the platforms themselves. | ||
| It was the culture that had grown up on those platforms. | ||
| It was some of the source information that those platforms and creators were drawing from. | ||
| And it was also what was being talked about in the news media at any given time that would then spill over into social media. | ||
| So all of those plus others factor into what history content we encounter on our screens and our phones every day. | ||
| And starting to think about that and peeling back those layers, that creates a more complex picture than just what we see on our screens at a given moment. | ||
| Many of us start a research project on Wikipedia. | ||
| Do you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Go ahead and expand on your answer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, Wikipedia is, I hate to use that word again, but it's a complex place. | |
| There are lots of agendas at work on Wikipedia. | ||
| Years ago, I actually was hired by somebody to write Wikipedia pages. | ||
| So there's that that's happening. | ||
| People are paying to have Wikipedia pages created, and those pages obviously are putting some flattering information in while taking unflattering information out. | ||
| There are also activists who use Wikipedia to promote particular agendas. | ||
| There are foreign state actors who use Wikipedia to promote disinformation narratives. | ||
| There are numerous links at the bottom of Wikipedia pages that are broken or don't lead to actual sources. | ||
| Some historians and scholars have actually experimented with creating or inventing imaginary historical events and then inserting them into Wikipedia and then seeing how far they travel or how much traction they get on the wider web. | ||
| So Wikipedia, it can be a useful source. | ||
| It sort of depends entry by entry, but I think it's healthy to approach all of these platforms with a bit of critical thinking and try to verify as much information as possible in other sources. | ||
| Let's talk to our viewers. | ||
| Bob is calling in from Massachusetts Independent Line. | ||
| Hi, Bob. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Bob, we're listening. | ||
| Please go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| First off, I'd like to say, yeah, there is a big difference in how we look at history. | ||
| Because remember the guy that wrote Roots? | ||
| You know, that movie roots. | ||
| Um, he even admitted everything in his book was made up. | ||
| None of it was true, absolutely none of it. | ||
| Now, I didn't like slavery, didn't care for it, but I don't believe any of the black people in this country deserve any reparations. | ||
| George Floyd was a lie. | ||
| You need a break. | ||
| The first coroner said that he died from drug overdose. | ||
| Then they went out and found a corner that would say he died from being asphyxiated, which he did not, and everybody knows it. | ||
| And now, police officers are. | ||
| So, Bob, what's your point in bringing up these examples? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because all of the history that this guy is talking about is history that now the left is beginning to write. | |
| They're destroying history, you're taking down statues and doing all that. | ||
| If you want to put a plaque on something that denigrates something, go ahead, but don't destroy it. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| Jason Steinauer, can history, and this is kind of a naive question, I guess, but can history be political? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, history is oftentimes political. | |
| And, you know, history, for me, my definition of history is that history is an argument. | ||
| History is an argument that we make about the past, right? | ||
| None of us was there at the American Revolution or the American War for Independence. | ||
| So, what do we have? | ||
| We have sources that have come down to us. | ||
| We have primary sources, we have secondary sources, we have pamphlets, we have first-hand accounts. | ||
| And so, what historians do is we take those sources, we evaluate them, we try to see what's in them, what's been left out, what different perspectives we have to look at a certain situation from in order to fully understand it, and then we make an argument about it. | ||
| We make an argument about why it's important, about why people should learn it, why we think it matters to us today. | ||
| And some of those arguments end up being intertwined with politics, and that's been happening for centuries. | ||
| It's not a new phenomenon, it's not unique to one side of the political spectrum or another. | ||
| It's part of doing history, and I think that's part of why history also elicits a lot of strong emotions from people because there are political aspects to it. | ||
| But that's part of the task and part of the challenge of being in the profession, of being a citizen who engages with history, and one of the reasons why public history to me is such a fascinating field, because ultimately, our goal is to speak to all Americans, regardless of their backgrounds and political ideologies. | ||
| And so, how do you make arguments that are grounded and rooted in evidence and make those in a way that at least a majority, if not all, Americans, and indeed people around the world, can engage with and embrace? | ||
| We are just over the Thanksgiving holiday, and I think everybody here listening can remember what they were taught about Thanksgiving: that the Indians and the pilgrims sat down together and had this lovely meal and et cetera, et cetera. | ||
| At what point does that history kind of dissolve into more nuanced truth? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, again, if we think about history as an argument, then I might suggest that we're constantly having that argument, and that's really healthy for a democracy. | |
| We should be having that argument. | ||
| We should be continually examining the sources of early America and asking tough questions about them in order to get to some more accurate and honest understanding of what happened in the past, whether it be with pilgrims or Puritans or indigenous populations or enslaved Africans or everything in between. | ||
| It's an ongoing discussion, an ongoing argument. | ||
| That's part of the beauty of these commemorative celebrations that we have. | ||
| In 2026, we have a chance to continue that conversation and continue that argument on a national stage and in our local communities. | ||
| And we can discuss and debate and argue about what we think that history really means, both back then and for us today. | ||
| I personally think that is a wonderful, beautiful thing about democracy. | ||
| I've been and traveled to other countries where those arguments and debates are not possible, where they are stifled by oppressive forces or by the government itself. | ||
| And I much prefer the system that we have, where we can have open debates like this one about our history. | ||
| I think that makes for a stronger democracy and for a stronger citizenry. | ||
| Jason Steinauer, is there something from 250 years ago that, in your view, is a misconception that we have been taught for 250 years that you would like to see corrected? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I mean, just on a very basic level, you know, we're commemorating next year in 1776 the Declaration of Independence. | |
| That's not the official American independence, right? | ||
| The American War for Independence lasts for another few years. | ||
| So that may be a misconception that people have. | ||
| But I think also it's an opportunity to think about the Declaration of Independence itself. | ||
| I mean, this was a very bold, radical document. | ||
| It makes some bold statements about life and liberty and the rights of all, not just men, but all human beings. | ||
| And I think it's an opportunity for us to really take stock of that and think through that very carefully and critically and see if we're actually upholding some of the bold ideas that are in that document. | ||
| So instead of accepting the document as just etched in parchment and immutable, let's think about it in a context that allows us to evolve and grow with it, to learn from its words, evolve its meaning, and apply it directly to where we are today and where we want to go. | ||
| I think that would be a great use of the commemoration next year. | ||
| Our previous guest, Darrell Davis, we asked about the taking down of Confederate monuments. | ||
| Do you view that as erasing history? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, again, I've been in places in Eastern Europe where monuments to Soviet dictatorship have been removed and replaced by monuments that are more reflective of the people and the values that they want to hold in democratic societies. | |
| So I think that if you look over the course of human history, buildings have come and gone, statues have come and gone. | ||
| What's important are the values that we want to embody as a society. | ||
| And if we believe in equality and liberty for all and democracy and freedom, then we should have public monuments and statues that embody those values. | ||
| You know, I think I agree with Darrell that if these monuments are removed and taken down, they can be placed into museums. | ||
| They can be interpreted by scholars. | ||
| Scholars can make arguments about them. | ||
| And then the public can come in and read those interpretations and make their own arguments about them. | ||
| That said, anytime you take an object and put it into a museum, it requires resources to preserve it, to conserve it, and to put it on display for the public. | ||
| So if we were to remove statues and put them into museums and memorials for people to learn from, hopefully that would also come with increased funding and resources for those museums and memorials to care for those objects over the long term and make them accessible to broad audiences. | ||
| Alan, Brooklyn Democrat, you are on with author and public historian Jason Steinhauer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Please go ahead. | |
| Alan, you with us? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Alan, we are listening to you. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Do you know what? | ||
| I apologize to you, Mr. Steinhauer. | ||
| Alan was having trouble connecting. | ||
| Let's talk to Richard, who's an independent in Illinois. | ||
| Richard, where in Illinois are you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm from the land of Lincoln. | |
| Right. | ||
| Which city are you in, Richard? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I am from South Illinois and Southern to none. | |
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| Go ahead with your question. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, my question is that in looking at history, history is a living process of reflection. | |
| I have had an interest because since age five, I was at Dachau concentration camp as a little boy with my mother. | ||
| I also had my dad as part of the prosecution at Nuremberg. | ||
| He was a lawyer. | ||
| He later became the head of the American sector with regard to implementing changes within the legal process of German law. | ||
| Now, whether or not they still stand firm today, I don't know, but they did learn a little bit about democracy. | ||
| We also included them in the right to protest. | ||
| They used to have a thing in Germany where, or they still have it. | ||
| They call it fushing, which is the same as Mardi Gras. | ||
| And even in that period of occupational period, they were given the right to be able to make fun of the United States and, believe it or not, the Soviet Union. | ||
| So I grew up also in the South. | ||
| And the lady that taught me about color with regard to humanity was a personal, how shall I say it, a lady who worked for Judy Garland, and she was a black woman. | ||
| And I, as a little three or four-year-old, asked her, why can't you get the dirt off your face? | ||
| And she explained to me that color was a thing that God had created because he loved different colors. | ||
| So, Richard, tie all that together now. | ||
| Put a bow on what you've been talking about. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| So, I became, like your friend there that we're listening to, I became a professional adult educator, having earned a master's degree in history, | ||
| but also being a graduate of Georgetown, and later earned a PhD and wound up in, believe it or not, the field of adult and continuing education and worked among people that basically were working in farms. | ||
| Hey, tell you what, Richard, we're going to have to leave it all right there. | ||
| Jason Steinhauer, any comment from what Richard had to say? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, well, first of all, thank you, Richard, for your service as an educator, and thank your father for his service. | |
| During World War II, my grandfather served in World War II in the American Army, and my grandparents on the other side of my family were Holocaust survivors. | ||
| My mother was actually born in a displaced persons camp outside of Ulm, Germany. | ||
| So this is part of the diversity and complexity of our American stories. | ||
| And I think what we just heard is all across this country, people have amazing stories about how they and their families fit into this larger thing that we call America. | ||
| And it's a great opportunity to start hearing those stories and recording those stories. | ||
| Richard, I encourage you to do an oral history with your family so that they know your story and your family's history. | ||
| I wish I had done that with my grandmother and my grandfather. | ||
| There are so many fascinating stories all over this country, some of which have been preserved and documented, some of which have not. | ||
| And maybe this is an opportunity in 2026 to preserve more of those stories while we still have the chance. | ||
| Jason Steinhauer, one of the things that both C-SPAN's American History TV and the America 250 Commission are doing are oral histories. | ||
| As a historian, a trained historian, do you find them valuable? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, I am a huge proponent of oral history. | |
| I began my career working in museums where we did oral history interviews with Jewish Americans who served in the Second World War. | ||
| At the Library of Congress, I worked at something called the Veterans History Project, which collects the stories of America's war veterans from World War I all the way through Iraq and Afghanistan. | ||
| So I've interviewed hundreds of veterans in my life. | ||
| I encourage everyone who's watching: if you have a veteran in your life who has not recorded his or her story, please take this opportunity to do so. | ||
| You can keep a copy for your family, you can keep a copy in your community, and you can give a copy to the Library of Congress so it will be preserved forever. | ||
| Oral histories are incredibly valuable primary sources. | ||
| They tell us so much about a time, a place, a period, the emotions that people experienced. | ||
| And then we use those oral histories in combination with other documents like newspapers, letters, diaries, secondary sources like scholarly texts to really fill in the three-dimensionality of the past. | ||
| So if you do anything in 2026 to commemorate America's semi-quincentennial, please do conduct an oral history with a loved one or someone in your community who has an amazing story and share it. | ||
| That would be a great contribution. | ||
| Let's hear from Edward calling in from New York City. | ||
| Hi, Edward. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning to all. | |
| I'm Edward here in Manhattan, New York City, and thank you, Mr. Steinhauer, for bringing up diversity, complexity, and honoring the local societies. | ||
| You know, we have many, many historical societies here in New York City. | ||
| But I wanted to just highlight the founding of the 369th Regiment in the Harlem Hellfighters in World War I, founded by a prominent white New York attorney here in New York City and the members of the Union League Club. | ||
| That's very complex. | ||
| That being said, this unit went to France to fight, trained by and financed by Mr. Hayward. | ||
| And when they got there, they were told that they would be stevedores and truck drivers, which he refused to accept. | ||
| And he went to Pershing himself, and Pershing said, well, the only way I can get around this, because of the segregation rules and laws, were to transfer the unit to the French Army, which they did. | ||
| And this unit, the Harlem Hellfighters, sustained the most number of days in the front lines of trenches. | ||
| They were the most highly decorated unit with something like 170 quad de guerre. | ||
| And oh, by the way, James Rhys Europe, who was the band leader of the unit when the unit stood down for rest periods in villages, conducted jazz concerts. | ||
| And he's actually credited with introducing jazz to France. | ||
| So there you go, just as an example. | ||
| And thank you for being there this morning and bringing up all these important points about history. | ||
| And also what you said about stories, the stories in families. | ||
| And really, that's the thread that I think binds all of this together and recording those stories and the oral histories. | ||
| I'm a combat veteran in the Marines from Vietnam. | ||
| And, you know, I always say to people, don't thank them for their service. | ||
| Ask them three simple questions. | ||
| What branch were you in? | ||
| Where did you go? | ||
| And what did you do? | ||
| And that really affirms and honors the veteran when you say that, when you ask them those three simple questions. | ||
| Thank you, sir, for calling in. | ||
| Jason Steinhauer. | ||
| Any comment for Edward? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, thank you for your service, Edward. | |
| And I would be honored to ask you about your service in an oral history. | ||
| I used to work at the New York Historical Society, which I think is called New York Historical now. | ||
| I also worked at the New York Public Library for a bit. | ||
| So I have great affection for the cultural institutions in New York. | ||
| And those are just two examples of local organizations, local history organizations that literally have millions and millions of documents in their archives. | ||
| It's just such a rich fountain of knowledge to drink from. | ||
| You could spend a full year inside those repositories and not even scratch the surface of what they contain. | ||
| So that's another activity that one could do during this upcoming year to be part of the festivities is to visit those organizations, go to the research rooms, not just the public exhibits, but go to the research rooms and look at stuff. | ||
| You know, when I lived in Manhattan, my girlfriend and I at the time went to New York Historical. | ||
| We went to the research room and we looked at old maps of the street that we lived on. | ||
| It was fascinating. | ||
| And it was such an exciting adventure to dig through that history. | ||
| That's something that any of us can do during the coming year to support our local organizations to use those materials and to connect our past with our present. | ||
| Jason Steinhauer, to go back to what we were talking about earlier, shouldn't all of this be available online for people? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that's a complicated question. | |
| I keep using complicated and complex. | ||
| So you can see how I kind of view the world. | ||
| It's complex and complicated because digitizing material is expensive. | ||
| It's expensive to take high quality scans and photographs of millions of documents to put metadata in them. | ||
| Metadata is the data about the data. | ||
| So basically, if I was to scan a document, I'd need to tell you when it was made, who created it. | ||
| I need to give you some information about it. | ||
| I need to do that a million times over. | ||
| And then I need a system to house all that information. | ||
| And then I need a mechanism to display it publicly so that people can search it and make meaning of it. | ||
| And for large organizations like the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress, maybe even the New York Public Library, they have the resources to do that. | ||
| But as I mentioned, there are 21,000 history organizations in the United States. | ||
| 80% of them have an annual budget below $250,000. | ||
| So the amount of investment that is needed to make all of this local history digitally available to anyone around the world is quite prohibitive for many organizations. | ||
| So there are two options. | ||
| One, people could make financial investments in these organizations so that they can do this work. | ||
| Or on the flip side, people can visit in person to look through the materials. | ||
| And that's sort of the situation that we find ourselves in at the moment. | ||
| In the History Club Substack newsletter, what topics were the most recent that you wrote about? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so I publish a newsletter on Substack where I try to talk about all of these questions around public history and the way we think about our past. | |
| I've recently written a couple of essays about artificial intelligence and its role potentially in how people learn about the past, how they encounter history, and how AI may shape the historical narratives that we encounter. | ||
| I have also written about America 250. | ||
| I've written some pieces about local history in California, visiting the Redwoods in South Dakota, which is one of my favorite historical states, rich with history everywhere across the state. | ||
| And I've also written about some of the more current events in our country, putting them in more of a historical perspective. | ||
| So all of that is available for people if they're interested. | ||
| Alan, Brooklyn, please go ahead. | ||
| You're on with Jason Steinhauer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you very much for the opportunity. | |
| Wonderful discussion. | ||
| One of the things that varies among generations is their understanding of how history is taught and how information is conveyed. | ||
| In the print era, we didn't have to worry so much about balancing truth and free speech because there was such diversity of print that the ideas competed of the best ones won out. | ||
| It's only since the broadcast era, when you give a really big government-funded or government-sponsored megaphone to a few people, that for most of the history of broadcasting, we had a fairness doctrine that required that anyone given that trust had the obligation to air opposing views to make sure that no really controversial views went unopposed or uncontested. | ||
| And since the Reagan era, a whole generation has grown up not having a fairness doctrine. | ||
| It was justified in part, ironically, on the advent of cable, which supposedly created such media diversity that we no longer needed to have a fairness doctrine to guarantee truth. | ||
| But then organizations like Fox began to self-select their audiences for viewpoints that might not have been true but were favored by that audience. | ||
| And we end up with the polarization we have today, where some people will believe untruths because they're part of a media tribe. | ||
| I don't think people can really understand the substance of history until they understand the context in which information control by technology and laws has shaped the way history occurs. | ||
| We never would have had a Nazi era, I believe, if it had not been first a radio era where he had the ability. | ||
| All right, Alan, we're going to leave it there. | ||
| A lot on the table. | ||
| Mr. Steinhauer, any comment for Alan? | ||
| And we will come back to Mr. Steinhauer. | ||
| It looks like we're having just a little bit of. | ||
| He's up in New York, upstate New York somewhere, and I think it's pretty cold, and that's why we're having a little trouble. | ||
| He's frozen, as they say. | ||
| Let's hear from Joe in Florida, Republican line. | ||
| Joe, what do you want to talk about? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| Interesting conversation. | ||
| I just wanted to segue into the pre-American history, like who was here? | ||
| Like, we just celebrated Thanksgiving and all that good stuff. | ||
| There's a talk right now, particularly in some indigenous communities, that there were people here that were not really what would have been thought. | ||
| And to Mr. Swamhaus's comments about it's very difficult to go to the Smithsonian Institution and get documents, Library of Congress. | ||
| Isn't it a fact, and I would like to comment on this, that there are certain documents that no matter how you try to dig into, people have a vested interest not to actually share those documents. | ||
| And furthermore, isn't it true that some of the folks that actually came here to form the United States actually left France? | ||
| They had no sovereignty, and to that extent, they still are not a sovereign people. | ||
| Hey, Joe, a lot there. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you so much for calling in and for being curious and having those great questions. | ||
| Jason Steinhauer, I want to address one of the questions that he asked, which was about pre-American history, pre-250 history. | ||
| And do we know enough about that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm not sure I understood the question. | |
| Can you say it again one more time? | ||
| Yeah, Joe was asking about pre-American history, you know, prior to 1776 and what was going on in this country. | ||
| Do we know enough about what was going on before, you know, basically the arrival of Europeans? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, there have been generations of scholars who have written about the colonial period, who have written about indigenous tribes who lived in the United States. | |
| There's people who work on even pre-human history. | ||
| We're thinking about, you know, the large mammals that used to roam the continent that we now call America. | ||
| So there's tons of scholarship out there. | ||
| Now, how much of that makes it to public audiences? | ||
| That's always a question. | ||
| I would encourage folks who are interested in these topics to actually look at the local universities in their area. | ||
| Generally speaking, university history departments will have specialists among the faculty who work on colonial era, United States history, or even prior to that. | ||
| And those are great places to start to find scholarly books and scholarly articles that have been written by those experts. | ||
| And then from there, you could go to your local library and talk to your librarians to do searches on those subjects. | ||
| There are quite literally tens of thousands of books that deal with that topic. | ||
| Maybe not as much of it is available on social media, but it's certainly available in the public domain for people to engage with. | ||
| Unfortunately, we were only able to scratch the surface of history with Jason Steinauer. | ||
| We could spend hours doing this. | ||
| We really appreciate your time. | ||
| The book is called History Disrupted: How Social Media and the World Wide Web Have Changed the Past. | ||
| Came out in 2021. | ||
| But Mr. Steinhauer also writes the History Club Substack newsletter, so you can go there as well. | ||
| Jason Steinauer, thank you for your time this morning on the Washington Journal. | ||
| Half an hour left in our conversation, and it's open forum. | ||
| We've talked about a lot of issues. | ||
| We started off with the shootings here in Washington, D.C. of the National Guard. | ||
| We've talked about several other topics throughout the morning. | ||
| Whatever public policy issue is on your mind, we'd like to hear it. | ||
| 202 is the area code for all of our numbers. | ||
| Democrats, call in at 748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, 748-8001. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| We'll begin taking those calls in just a minute. | ||
|
unidentified
|
On the day after Thanksgiving, today, C-SPAN will present a marathon lineup of episodes from our new weekly series, America's Book Club, hosted by acclaimed author and civic leader David Rubenstein, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Eastern. | |
| Filmed at some of the nation's most iconic libraries and cultural institutions, America's Book Club features lively, thought-provoking conversations with leading authors, policymakers, business innovators, and cultural figures. | ||
| Featured guests include Stacey Schiff at the National Archives, John Grisham at the Library of Congress, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett at the Folger Shakespeare Library, David Grant, also at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Walter Isaacson at the National Archives, and Jose Andres at Catholic University. | ||
| Watch episodes from our new weekly series, America's Book Club, in a marathon the day after Thanksgiving, today, starting at 10 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| Also, head over to c-span.org to get the full schedule. | ||
| Sunday night on C-SPAN's Q&A. | ||
| White House trade advisor Peter Navarro went to prison in 2024, convicted of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the January 6th Committee after being found guilty on two counts. | ||
| In his new book, I Went to Prison So You Won't Have To, Peter Navarro lays out the Justice Department's case, his arrest and trial, and what it was like for him behind bars. | ||
| People think you're in a dorm rather than a cell. | ||
| It's like everybody told me there that they'd rather be in a cell because you only have to worry about one other guy. | ||
| You know, there's a thing called the lock, lock in the sock, right? | ||
| You take a padlock, you throw it in a sock, and a lot of rough justice goes on like that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
White House trade advisor and author Peter Navarro, Sunday night at 8 Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. You can listen to Q&A wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app. | |
| Get C-SPAN wherever you are with C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app that puts you at the center of democracy, live and on demand. | ||
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| Catch the latest episodes of Washington Journal. | ||
| Find scheduling information for C-SPAN's TV and radio networks, plus a variety of compelling podcasts. | ||
| The C-SPAN Now app is available at the Apple Store and Google Play. | ||
| Download it for free today. | ||
| C-SPAN, democracy unfiltered. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| All right, we got about 30 minutes left in this morning's Washington Journal, and we want to hear your voices. | ||
| The numbers are up on the screen. | ||
| Reminder, 202 is the area code for all of our numbers, 7488,000 for Democrats, 748-8001 for Republicans, and 748-8002 for independents. | ||
| Please start dialing in. | ||
| It's open forum. | ||
| Any public policy issue that you want to talk about is game. | ||
| And we'll begin taking those calls in just a minute. | ||
| This is an article that was on trending politics this morning. | ||
| Rhode Island teacher who downplayed Charlie Kirk's assassination to be reinstated. | ||
| Rhode Island teacher who was placed on administrative leave after calling Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk a piece of garbage in the immediate aftermath of his assassination is set to be reinstated. | ||
| Quote, according to the Barrington Public Schools, the high school teacher at the center of the recent district independent investigation will be returning to the classroom on December 1st. | ||
| Shortly after Kirk was gunned down by a far-left extremist while speaking with students at Utah Valley University on September 10th, this teacher, whose name is Philio, he unleashed a roughly one-minute video tirade in which he claimed Kirk hated the LGBTQ community and hated women's rights. | ||
| And according to his, according to what he had to say, Mr. Filio, Benjamin Filio, said that Charlie Kirk was a piece of garbage. | ||
| And look what happens by Charlie. | ||
| He was suspended at that point, but is coming back to the classroom. | ||
| Now, this was in the Washington Times this morning. | ||
| Trump wants to remake the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. | ||
| President Trump has seemingly set his sights on a new renovation project, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. | ||
| He posted Wednesday on True Social a video of various scenes of the reflecting pool being cleaned. | ||
| Near the end, it says, make D.C. beautiful again. | ||
| This is the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool before Secretary of the Interior Doug Bergham. | ||
| And I fix it. | ||
| Study it hard because you won't be seeing this Biden filth and incompetence much longer. | ||
| That's on the Washington Times this morning. | ||
| Let's hear your voices. | ||
| David, Lynchburg, Virginia, Independent, you're on the air, please. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are we doing this morning? | ||
| How are you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, I'm. | |
| He was talking about the reflecting pool. | ||
| I was graduating in 1967. | ||
| We took a senior trip to the Capitol. | ||
| Went through the United Nations and all that. | ||
| But when we tore the White House down, it was against the law. | ||
|
unidentified
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There's a law, the destruction of government property, which all the monument and all that stuff belongs to the American people. | |
| Keep that in mind, the American people. | ||
| So are you talking about the East Wing coming down? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| The demolition of the East Wing? | ||
| Are you saying that President Trump broke the law on that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, there's a Rule 18 is destruction of government property. | |
| If enough American people would file a civil lawsuit, I would join. | ||
| Because we've got kids and stuff come up. | ||
| Everything in that capital belongs to the American people. | ||
| Thank you, David and Lynchburg. | ||
| Let's hear from Kurt in Anaheim, California, Republican lying. | ||
| Kurt, good morning. | ||
| Early good morning to you. | ||
| Kurt, you with us? | ||
| Last chance for Kurt and Anaheim. | ||
| Let's talk to Joe in McKean, Pennsylvania. | ||
| Hi, Joe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, hello. | |
| Hello. | ||
| Yes, I was wondering if ICE is supposed to be getting all the bad guys. | ||
| How did the shooter of the two National Guards drive from the West Coast out of Washington across, I don't know, a dozen states that have FBI, Border Patrol, ICE agents all over the place supposedly arresting the bad guys. | ||
| And this guy gets all the way to Washington, D.C., just outside of, you know, hundreds or thousands, hundreds of politicians and this and that, and guns down to National Guard. | ||
| Where was the ICE? | ||
| Why wasn't ICE doing getting the bad guys? | ||
| Joe, are you suggesting incompetence or conspiracy? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the man had CIA affiliation, and did he believe he had get out of the jail card type situation where he could go and do this stuff and he had CIA attachment that he was untouchable type situation. | |
| Or, you know. | ||
| All right, we got the point, Joe. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Earl, Canton, Georgia, Independent line. | ||
| Earl, what's on your mind this morning? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, I tried to call earlier when they were talking about the Nazis and all, but I was stationed, I sent a text, I was stationed in Germany in 1970 after being drafted, and I lived off post next to a cemetery, and we'd walk through that cemetery, and you'd see gravestones. | |
| And the only place I ever saw a swastika was there. | ||
| It was posted in a small photograph, you know, like you'd take in those photo booths here a long time ago. | ||
| Of the soldier that was an SS soldier. | ||
| And that's the only place I ever saw a swastika. | ||
| This was in 1970, 71. | ||
| So that's my comment. | ||
| Thank you, sir, for calling in. | ||
| Frank Aberdeen, Maryland, Democrat. | ||
| Frank, you're on the Washington Journal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I'm calling about the person who murdered the National Guard woman. | ||
| He was reportedly in an Afghan CIA unit known for its brutality and labeled as a death squad by human rights groups. | ||
| A friend said that he was having difficulty with what he saw and did. | ||
| Was this PTSD? | ||
| Even Donald Trump called him cuckoo and nuts yesterday in an interview. | ||
| The government would be crazy to demand a death penalty for this person for the simple reason that if they do, when it gets to the penalty frick phase, they would have to talk about what we did in Afghanistan and release a lot of embarrassing and terrible stuff that we did. | ||
| And so we, you know, the good news for the government is what we put him through is not an excuse for his action. | ||
| He does deserve prison. | ||
| He does deserve a life sentence, but he should be spared the death penalty. | ||
| That's my point here. | ||
| That's Frank and Aberdeen, Maryland calling in. | ||
| Joseph Curl is an op-ed writer for the Washington Times. | ||
| And here is this morning's op-ed. | ||
| True politician Marjorie Taylor Green takes the money and runs. | ||
| Wiggy Georgia Republican entered Congress worth $700,000, leaves worth $25 million. | ||
| He writes, it takes a special kind of person to become a politician, but not in a good way. | ||
| The modern politician deeply craves love from strangers, will say and do anything to stay in office, and once in office invariably gets very, very rich by engaging in insider trading that is illegal for anyone but politicians. | ||
| Take Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican, whose financial journey is as unconventional and, let's be honest, as head-scratching as her political career. | ||
| Since taking her seat in Congress in 2021, MTG hasn't just been making headlines. | ||
| She's been making bank. | ||
| Her net worth skyrocketed from a modest $700,000 when she took office to a cool $25 million in just a few short years. | ||
| And this is according to an analysis group called Quiver Quantitative. | ||
| Not bad when your salary is $174,000. | ||
| Perhaps the answer to her incredible surge in wealth lies in her uncanny, almost clairvoyant knack for stock trading. | ||
| Since joining the House, Ms. Green has executed a staggering 450 stock trades. | ||
| Her timing was particularly exquisite. | ||
| Take, for instance, a curious shopping spree in April. | ||
| According to financial disclosures, Ms. Green went on a veritable stock buying binge, snapping up $32,000 to $480,000 worth of shares in major tech and logistics companies like Apple, Amazon, NVIDIA, and FedEx. | ||
| These purchases were made just hours before her one-time staunch ally, President Trump, took to TrueSocial to declare that it was a great time to buy, a message that preceded a White House announcement of a 90-day pause on tariffs. | ||
| What a stroke of luck. | ||
| Democrats cried foul, suggesting it smelled suspiciously like insider trading. | ||
| But Ms. Green, ever the picture of innocence, had a simple explanation. | ||
| She doesn't manage her own portfolio. | ||
| A financial advisor, she claims, is the puppet master behind these prescient moves. | ||
| In the article, it goes on to say that now, after a worldwind career marked by controversy and a dramatic recent split with Mr. Trump, who called her a traitor, Ms. Green has announced her resignation, citing frustration with her own party and a desire to spend more time with her family. | ||
| She plans to step down January 5th. | ||
| And here's where the timing gets truly poetic. | ||
| Her chosen departure date is a mere two days after her federal pension fully vests. | ||
| To qualify for a lifetime pension, lawmakers must serve for five years. | ||
| Her start date was January 3rd, 2021. | ||
| Do the math. | ||
| Again, this is Joseph Curl writing an op-ed in the Washington Times this morning. | ||
| Nikki in Rockaway Park, New York, thanks for holding on. | ||
| You're on the Washington Journal this morning. | ||
| What's on your mind? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let me make sure my television is. | |
| Nikki, television. | ||
| Nikki, ready? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I am. | |
| And it's very cool that you had that last segment, that report about Marjorie Taylor Greene. | ||
| But your program today was very good. | ||
| Darrell Davis and your other guests, you know, they speak truth. | ||
| I believe in history. | ||
| All right. | ||
| I'm a student of history. | ||
| And the things that America went through, the Declaration of Independence began with Thomas Paine. | ||
| I don't know if I know that you know a lot. | ||
| So Thomas Paine wrote common sense. | ||
| He also writes a pamphlet called Crisis in America. | ||
| And that turned all the colonists against the king when troops were being put into their cities, less than 249 years ago. | ||
| You know, when they sent troops, mercenaries, into our colonists because they wanted to put tariffs on everything, especially molasses. | ||
| It wasn't tea because you can't make room without molasses. | ||
| And every sailor was given a certain amount of rum for their service. | ||
| Anyhow. | ||
| Hey, Nikki, we're going to have to leave it there because we've got a lot of calls on the line, and we appreciate your participating. | ||
| I hope you're having a good Thanksgiving weekend. | ||
| Sonia in St. Paul, Minnesota. | ||
| Hi, Sonia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I really hope that the majority of Americans will take offense at the fact that we now have an announcement that there's going to be, if it's up to the gentleman who is in the office of president, there's going to be a change in the Lincoln Memorial, for God's sake. | ||
| There are so many things that have happened in the city. | ||
| What was the announcement about the Lincoln Memorial, Sonia? | ||
|
unidentified
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That he's going to make improvements in it. | |
| Oh, you mean the reflecting pool? | ||
| The reflecting pool. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Why would that be touched? | ||
| I just hope enough Americans will be offended for something. | ||
| The fact that he did what he did to the east wing of the White House just really made me sick to think that he could come in and do what he will do. | ||
| And he does it with just the manner of a person who says, well, these are my petunias. | ||
| I'm going to replace them. | ||
| I'm going to change them. | ||
| And I wish that we would have some attention, pay some attention to the fact that we can't have Trump on everything, T-R-U-M-P. | ||
| And I won't say anymore because I don't want to be more personal. | ||
| I'd like to be, but I won't on this occasion. | ||
| I just wish that more Americans would express their being offended to their congresspeople. | ||
| And certainly, let's hope that there can be changes that will say. | ||
| Sonia, how long have you lived in St. Paul? | ||
|
unidentified
|
About 50 years. | |
| Okay. | ||
| I might be older than I think that you might think I am. | ||
| I'm often, I was told by a Comcast guy when we finished a conversation, and I told him that I had to get on the floor for the modem that he wanted me to look at. | ||
| And I said, I have to use pillows because I'm in my 70s, which I was at that time. | ||
| And I said, I have to do that because I'm in my 70s. | ||
| When we hung up, he said to me, you know what? | ||
| I really would like to tell you. | ||
| You can ride with my posse anytime because I thought you were around 35 or 40. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Listen, thank you. | ||
| Big Minnesota winners, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you said that right. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| All right, Sonia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Bye-bye. | |
| Don is in New Orleans, Independent Line. | ||
| Hi, Don. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Happy Thanksgiving. | ||
| And our best prayers for the sister soldier paid the ultimate price for this country, for democracy, and for the Constitution. | ||
| And we talk about Marjorie Taylor Green, and she's $25 million. | ||
| I want to speak on this morning briefly, if I may, on the $54 million that Louisiana State University owes Coach Brian Kelly of a 10-year, $100 million guaranteed contract. | ||
| You know, there's enough public policy there, Don, that I want to hear your take on this because that just kind of went kaplooey, didn't it? | ||
| Or had that been brewing for a while? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it just shows you when we talk about public service and public office, Louisiana State University, the flagship public university in Louisiana. | |
| And now, Brian Kelly gets $54 million. | ||
| Now, the previous coach, Ed Ogeron, who won the NAS championship with quarterback Jeff Burroughs, who won last night against Baltimore assistant at the Bengals, by the way, he's owed $17 million. | ||
| Still. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And his wife gets half of that. | |
| Big ups to her. | ||
| So that's $70 million. | ||
| Now they got a, of course, they have the interim coach, Frank Wilson, who's one of the best recruiters in the nation. | ||
| He's interim coach. | ||
| And now they're in hot pursuit of Lan Kiffen. | ||
| So you're talking about four coaches. | ||
| Throughout this, didn't the athletic director who is paid by state funds get fired? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The president, President Tate, went to Rutgers University, took some professors with him. | |
| They're getting rid of a lot of women, deans, and stuff like that. | ||
| This is a public university with public dollars, but we tend to focus on the politician, the public servants, which we should. | ||
| But our public universities are using public dollars. | ||
| And by the way, New Orleans is the engine that drives the state. | ||
| And Tulane University is a private university, one of the best in the country, universities. | ||
| Hey, Don, what do you do down in New Orleans? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a business owner. | |
| I'm a business owner. | ||
| What kind of business? | ||
|
unidentified
|
All kinds of internet from law service to renovation properties to transportation. | |
| I'm in it. | ||
| But the thing is, Tulane University was one of the charter members of the Southeastern Conference, and they had the first African-American athlete, Stephen Martin. | ||
| But it got out because it said that sports was getting out of hand back in the 60s. | ||
| So, well, I'm just proposing the preposterous salaries when we talk about public officials. | ||
| We just can't talk about the elected. | ||
| We have to talk about the selected and these coaches, and they all rail against these players getting the NIL deals. | ||
| What do you think about the NIL deals that the players are getting? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think what I think about it is that if a athlete goes in, he goes in under the same premise as the coaches and these programs. | |
| These programs say, well, we don't have nothing to do with the university. | ||
| But they use the university name, image, and likeness to promote that university. | ||
| So the players are utilized to make the profits for these universities because they are, here's the thing. | ||
| Louisiana produces a lot of athletes. | ||
| Don't get me wrong. | ||
| But they're supplemented by Texas, Florida, and now California. | ||
| So those states are investing in K through 12 education and even athletics. | ||
| And yet Louisiana finish is in the 48th, 49th that educates public education. | ||
| But yet you have a high-profile flagship university. | ||
| There's an imbalance in policy when we talk about the true amateur status of athletes. | ||
| There's no amateur status of athletes when you do not support the development of human beings. | ||
| And Louisiana does a lot of the job of doing that based on K-12 results. | ||
| Don, pleasure to spend a few minutes with you this morning. | ||
| Call back in. | ||
| Rob, Overland Park, Kansas, Democrat. | ||
| Rob, what's on your mind? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning and happy Thanksgiving. | |
| I wanted to just hopefully take just a minute and make three quick points. | ||
| One is I wanted to send a shout out to Brian Lamb, you know, who started C-SPAN 46 years ago, something like that. | ||
| I've always followed C-SPAN and I'm so glad that it's there as a medium. | ||
| You know, people can call in. | ||
| I listen to a lot of your call-ins. | ||
| Secondly, I wanted to just do a correction. | ||
| You're reading this article about Emily Osborne, who was reinstated as a teacher. | ||
| And that was killing Charlie Kirk did not happen by a far-left person. | ||
| There's no such thing established. | ||
| I know that article said it. | ||
| You didn't say it. | ||
| So I just want to put it out there. | ||
| I mean, he was raised in a Republican home, and he had no affiliation with the Democratic Party or anything like that. | ||
| And thirdly, I wanted to say that I had predicted back in February, you know, on social media that Donald Trump will be the earliest lame duck president. | ||
| And I think we're seeing that happen. | ||
| So, and I think it's just going to get worse from here. | ||
| So things are going to get far worse for the U.S. and also for Donald Trump. | ||
| Hey, Rob, before you leave, I just want to show this headline from the Washington Post. | ||
| After Trump push, Indiana lawmakers set redistricting vote. | ||
| The Indiana legislature is coming back in December to look at potentially redistricting one of the competitive Democratic seats in that state. | ||
| There was talk about Kansas, and I know Overland Park, Kansas, I think your representative is Cherise David, isn't it? | ||
| Is it not? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, she is. | |
| She's a wonderful rep. I love her. | ||
| Right, but she could be, there was talk about Kansas doing a redistricting, and that would have been one of the seats. | ||
| Or the only, she's the only Democrat in Kansas. | ||
| So is there still talk about that happening? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, sure. | |
| I'm keeping up with those things, but I'm not really concerned about it because I don't think Kansas Supreme Court is going to go for that. | ||
| They will say you can't do that. | ||
| So I am very confident because when Kansas vote, they may be Republican, but there is a level, there is a modicum of fairness there. | ||
| And I'm very confident that's not how that's going to go. | ||
| So thanks for bringing that up. | ||
| That's important. | ||
| But I don't think a lot of these demands from Trump are going to go in these states the way he wants to. | ||
| I think they will go the other way. | ||
| Rob, thanks for spending a few minutes with us. | ||
| David's calling in from Indianapolis. | ||
| David, you're on the Washington Journal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, thank you. | |
| I'll try to be brief. | ||
| I have two suggestions relative to health care costs. | ||
| And the first is, I think we ought to stop advertisement of prescription drugs on television. | ||
| If you watch and count, you'll be surprised how much time the drug companies are paying for, which is expensive time. | ||
| And actually, when you talk to most doctors, they would prefer that those ads not be on television because their patients come to them thinking that they know more than the doctors do. | ||
| That's number one. | ||
| Number two, I have to say, I'm almost embarrassed to say this. | ||
| I know there's sort of deserts of medical care across our country, but when you live in the metropolitan area like I do, there's a hospital every five miles. | ||
| And I visited one the other day. | ||
| I thought I had walked into a Trump casino. | ||
| There were restaurants, there were snack bars, there were waterfalls and palm trees in it. | ||
| My God, come on now. | ||
| And you talk to people there and they say, well, we just want patients to feel comfortable. | ||
| I'm sorry, forget it. | ||
| Nobody feels comfortable when they go to the hospital. | ||
| I don't care if, I guess we could gold plate them following our president's example. | ||
| But come on. | ||
| There ought to be hospitals in cities like this now are run by business people. | ||
| And they have they spend money on nonsense. | ||
| And that, of course, we all pay for through insurance. | ||
| Thank you, David, in Indianapolis. | ||
| Stephanie's in New Jersey. | ||
| Democrat. | ||
| Stephanie, where in New Jersey? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mount Claire. | |
| Is that up by the city? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You talk about New York? | |
| Yes. | ||
| We're about 30 minutes from New York. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| What's on your mind this morning, Stephanie? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's just ironic how believing everything on the Democrat and Joe Biden. | |
| Donald Trump is in office now, and he's just destroying everything. | ||
| And it's just drugs have been coming into this country forever. | ||
| It didn't just happen when Biden got into office. | ||
| And I don't understand it. | ||
| And the kids talking about those in Congress that are insider trades and this, that, and the other, getting rich. | ||
| Nobody talks about Donald Trump. | ||
| He's getting rich in the White House. | ||
| Thank you, ma'am, for calling in. | ||
| We appreciate it. | ||
| Now, in just a minute, the House of Representatives is going to be coming into session. | ||
| This is for a pro forma only. | ||
| We will go to it as soon as they open the doors and gavel in. | ||
| They'll only be in for a few minutes. | ||
| So lots of programming ahead planned on both C-SPAN and C-SPAN 2. | ||
| You're going to see America 250 programming. | ||
| You're going to see America's Book Club programming. | ||
| You're going to see, you know, some really solid things this weekend. | ||
| And there's a full day on C-SPAN 2 of book TV and American history TV programming. | ||
| So go to c-span.org, get our full schedule. | ||
| We're glad you're with us. |