C-SPAN’s Washington Journal (12/03/2025) dissects Trump’s controversial Venezuelan drug boat strikes—90+ deaths since September, no congressional approval—with callers citing legal violations under UCMJ and international law. Maduro’s alleged role overshadows Mexico’s fentanyl crisis (50K overdoses in 2023), while critics compare tactics to racial violence and question $6–8M daily Caribbean military costs. Shawn Vandiver of Afghan EVAC counters with PTSD-driven extremism among Afghan allies, despite rigorous vetting. Democrats like Rep. Melanie Stansbury demand accountability, linking Trump’s strikes to broader legal and ethical failures, including blocked Epstein investigations and expiring ACA subsidies, while Republicans defend military action as necessary against cartel "terrorism." [Automatically generated summary]
Providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy.
Coming up this morning on Washington Journal, along with your calls and comments live, we'll talk about the results of Tuesday night's special election in Tennessee and what it means for the upcoming midterm elections with Inside Election Deputy Editor Jacob Rushkin.
Then, Washington Examiner Defense Reporter Mike Brest on questions surrounding U.S. military strikes on suspected drug boats and America's defense posture as tensions mount with Venezuela.
Also, Republican South Carolina Congressman William Timmons, chair of the Oversight Subcommittee on Military and Foreign Affairs, discusses U.S. tensions with Venezuela, Ukraine-Russia peace efforts, and the future of ACA subsidies.
And Afghan EVAC founder and president Sean VanDiver talks about his organization and the Trump administration's response to an Afghan national being named as the suspect in the National Guard shootings in Washington, D.C.
Then New Mexico Democratic Congresswoman Melanie Stansberry on the future of ACA subsidies and congressional news of the day.
Mr. President, yesterday, this is the headline from the Washington Times.
Trump vows land strikes against drug cartels.
It says that President Trump said yesterday that the U.S. military would, quote, very soon carry out military strikes on land against drug traffickers in some South American countries as he plans to expand operations that so far have focused on smugglers' boats in the Caribbean Sea.
During the cabinet meeting at the White House, Mr. Trump said his policy was, quote, taking those SOBs out, he spelled that out, and would continue to do so despite questions from Democrats and some Republicans about the legality of the boat strikes.
We're getting your take on that this morning, and we'll start with Rob in Poughkeepsie, New York.
Democrat, good morning, Rob, you're on the air.
unidentified
Hey, good morning.
Thank you for C-SPAN.
You know, I think that I'm totally against all of these countries in South America that are sending harmful drugs to the United States, Mexico included, Central American countries.
Totally against these countries.
I think Venezuela is probably one of the lesser countries that are sending these harmful drugs.
But I think that it's a bit of a distraction, the whole business with Venezuela from where we look strong with Venezuela.
But we're actually, I think it's a distraction from how weak we are in terms of Russia and what they're doing to Ukraine.
My understanding is that we are not sending missiles to Ukraine that could be used to fight against Russia.
So, Rob, we can talk about during open forum, but coming back now to this hemisphere, you would be totally against any increased attacks on Venezuela, or where do you stand on that?
unidentified
Well, you know, I think it's a bit of a Venezuela is a bit of a distraction.
I think Maduro is a killer and a murderer.
And so I'm not against trying to go against Maduro.
That I think is a good thing.
But again, I think it's a distraction and that missiles ought to be supplied to Ukraine.
The Armed Services Committee held a single classified briefing with administration officials on October 1.
As a member of the committee, I attended the briefing.
I'm not allowed to discuss the facts that I learned in that briefing.
But I can say the following.
The briefing did not provide us with the legal rationale justifying the strikes.
The briefers did not provide us with concrete information about the identity of the individuals killed or the groups targeted with the strikes.
The briefers would provide no information about the policy for determining when boats would be attacked rather than interdicted.
Eventually, after weeks and weeks of pressure, the administration finally allowed senators to read in the SCIF the classified legal rationale it prepared to justify these military actions.
By the time senators charged with overseeing military operations and providing the budget for national defense were allowed to review the legal rationale, the strikes had been underway for nearly two months.
I've reviewed the legal rationale, but because the administration continues to call it classified, I'm not allowed to disclose its contents.
But I can say the following.
The legal rationale is weak.
It misinterprets and misuses historical materials regarding the Constitution's allocation of war powers.
Its analysis of the domestic law allowing presidential action is flimsy and would essentially repeal the careful language used in the Constitution and further clarified in the War Powers Act, vesting Congress, the Article I branch, with the power to initiate war.
And its analysis of international law justifying these military strikes is, frankly, embarrassing.
I can also say this, nothing in the rationale that senators can read in a classified setting would allow any military action against the nation of Venezuela.
That was Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, and this is Melanie in Louisville, Texas.
Democrat, good morning, Melanie.
unidentified
Good morning.
So are you still asking about the stance on land strikes?
Yes.
Correct.
First of all, I believe being the commander-in-chief means that you're in charge of everything that happens underneath you.
Being the director of quote-unquote war means that you are giving commands.
And yes, I'm sorry that the admiral is being put under the bus for this, but he is also following illegal orders.
And as an admiral, there shouldn't be anybody that should be able to question or not.
And as far as these strikes on these boats, if you can pinpoint close enough to see that there are individuals on a boat, you should be able to also zoom in to see if they truly are carrying contraband.
And as far as taking the land, I think that it is highly illegal, and we have not determined that there is anything that Venezuela is doing wrong.
If anything, I think Venezuela has every right and probably will declare war on the United States to their So, Melanie, when you say zoom in and see if they're actually carrying contraband, if they could see that and they let's assume that they zoomed in and they did see that it was drugs, would you be in favor of that strike?
Would you say then that's a legal justified strike?
unidentified
Absolutely not.
That is what the Coast Guard is for.
The Coast Guard is there to board, you know, entry, because until then, they're still in international waters.
That means that internationally, nobody can touch them.
But once they cross into United States waters, that's when the Coast Guard can board these boats and see actually what are they carrying.
And this is a Republican in Smithfield, North Carolina.
unidentified
Michael, good morning.
Good morning.
I watched probably the last 15 or 20 minutes of the briefing yesterday, and I never heard anything about land strikes.
And, of course, I hadn't read a paper this morning.
So if there's any way you can verify, other than one source, maybe three sources, that President Trump or someone in his administration did say there could be land strikes.
So we just played the clip earlier in the program of President Trump saying that this is so I showed you the Washington Times that it says Trump vows land strikes against drug cartels, eyesights in Venezuela, Colombia as legal political backlash intensifies.
I'll get you more of that.
But assuming that he did, and you can certainly go back into our archives on C-SPAN.org and watch the entire briefing, what do you think?
unidentified
Well, I watched the clip he showed on C-SPAN.
I didn't hear that.
I mean, I'm not disputing anybody, but I heard the Secretary of Defense and I heard President Trump, but maybe it's just me.
You know, I don't know.
I did watch C-SPAN's replay on Washington Journal, and I didn't hear it.
So I'll see it again.
There's no doubt about it.
I'll eventually see it on the news or local news, national news, maybe even on C-SPAN.
And here is the Washington Post about Secretary Hegseth.
It says, it says, Hegseth says he saw no one alive.
It says that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday that a couple of hours passed before he was made aware that a September military strike he authorized and watched live required an additional attack to kill two survivors, further distancing himself from an incident now facing congressional inquiry.
Speaking in the cabinet room alongside President Trump, Hegseth delivered the most extensive public accounting yet of his involvement in the strike on alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean.
Lawmakers and law of war experts have questioned whether the episode constitutes a war crime, and if so, who bears responsibility?
Well, let's hear from Secretary Hagseth directly about what he said.
The first couple of strikes, as you would, as any leader would want, you want to own that responsibility.
So I said, I'm going to be the one to make the call after getting all the information and make sure it's the right strike.
That was September 2nd.
There's a lot of intelligence that goes into that building that case and understanding that a lot of people providing information.
I watched that first strike live.
As you can imagine, at the Department of War, we got a lot of things to do.
So I didn't stick around for the hour and two hours, whatever, where all the sensitive site exploitation digitally occurs.
So I moved on to my next meeting.
A couple of hours later, I learned that that commander had made the, which he had the complete authority to do.
And by the way, Admiral Bradley made the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat.
He sunk the boat, sunk the boat, and eliminated the threat.
And he was the right call.
We have his back.
And the American people are safer because narco-terrorists know you can't bring drugs through the water and eventually on land if necessary to the American people.
We will eliminate that threat and we're proud to do it.
unidentified
So you didn't see any survivors, to be clear, after that first strike.
I did not personally see survivors, but I stand because the thing was on fire.
It was exploded in fire and smoke.
You can't see anything.
You got digital.
This is called the fog of war.
This is what you and the press don't understand.
You sit in your air-conditioned offices or up on Capitol Hill and you nitpick and you plant fake stories in the Washington Post about kill everybody phrases on anonymous sources not based in anything, not based in any truth at all.
And then you want to throw up really irresponsible terms about American heroes, about the judgment that they made.
I wrote a whole book on this topic because of what politicians and the press do to warfighters.
President Trump has empowered commanders, commanders to do what is necessary, which is dark and difficult things in the dead of night on behalf of the American people.
We support them and we will stop the poisoning of the American people.
And again, that full press conference is on our website in its entirety, cspan.org.
Take a look if you missed any of that or if you'd like to go back and review.
Here is the New York Post with the headline.
Trump again threatens Venezuela land strikes and says Colombia also at risk.
It says that he talked about Venezuela first and then it says here the president quickly pivoted from talking about Venezuela to Colombia, whose left-wing president has clashed with Trump.
Quote, I hear Colombia, the country of Colombia, is making cocaine.
They have cocaine manufacturing plants and then they sell us the cocaine.
Anybody that's doing that and selling it into our country is subject to attack.
No, not just Venezuela.
And we are going to just pause our calls.
We will come back to our calls about Venezuela and possibility of land strikes.
But first we're going to talk to Jacob Rubashkin.
He's deputy editor of Inside Elections about that special election in Tennessee that happened yesterday.
So this was a special election in Middle Tennessee in a pretty Republican district last night to replace former Congressman Mark Greene, who was a Republican, and the Republican candidate won.
That was Matt Van Epps.
He won by about nine points, 54% to the Democrat Afton Baines, 45%.
Now you might say, good night for Republicans.
They won a House seat.
They get to bolster their majority here in Washington, D.C.
But this was a district that Donald Trump won at the top of the ticket by 22 points in 2024, just a year ago.
So a shift of 13 points toward Democrats in just one year of the Trump administration.
And that result, while nice for Republicans that they get another seat, signals a lot of concern for next year when there are a whole host of House districts on the battlefield that are a lot less Republican than this one that might be vulnerable given the terms of the national environment.
I think that it was not a particularly close race, right?
A nine-point win is a somewhat comfortable margin, but it is also concerning for Republicans.
And it was also what a lot of Republicans that I spoke to expected the race to look like when all was said and done.
All three things can be true.
It's simply a function of the fact that this district is so Republican at its core.
And Republicans spent millions of dollars trying to keep it in their column.
And it still was a competitive race.
That's the concerning thing.
If this had been a toss-up swing seat district that we talk about every two years and they won it by nine points, that would be one thing.
But this is a district that had no right to be anywhere near competitive that Republicans had to come in and spend $3 million on to get Matt Van Epps across the finish line against a Democratic candidate who had significant vulnerabilities, who was not a perfect recruit for that party.
And all that points to, along with the other evidence we have, a pretty bleak picture for Republicans in the national environment.
They've got to turn things around if they want to have a successful midterm next year.
Well, Democrats really wanted to make this race about affordability.
The Democratic candidate, Afton Bain, took a page out of the playbook of successful candidates from previous elections this year, like Mikey Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger, even Zorhan Mamdani, in the way that she focused relentlessly on the cost of living in the Nashville area in the rest of the district.
She talked about bringing grocery prices down, making life more affordable.
However, she was not able to outrun the attacks that Republicans lobbed against her.
And that had a lot to do with the things she's said and done as a community organizer and as a state legislator over the last couple of years that ultimately confirmed a lot of Republican voters' worst fears about what a Democrat was.
So she's on camera saying that she's a pretty radical person.
She's on camera saying that she supports defunding the police, that she enjoys chasing around ICE agents.
So Republicans really made this race about a radical policy positions of a Democrat while the Democrat was trying to make the race about cost of living.
Two things that were not a part of this race at all, the big beautiful bill that Republicans passed earlier this year that many in the party are staking their hopes on for the midterms next year, and President Donald Trump, whose name really was absent, except when people were asking, why hasn't Trump done more to help Matt Van Epps?
Yeah, so he comes from a pretty classic background for Republican members of Congress.
He has now served in political office before, but he has served in several positions in the administration of outgoing Republican Tennessee Governor Matt, excuse me, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee.
And also, and highlighted by his campaign, Van Epps is a West Point graduate.
He flew helicopters in the Army where he had a decorated career.
So he'll join a growing coterie of Republican and some Democratic helicopter pilots, both from the Army and the Navy, that now number, I believe, half a dozen in the halls of Congress this year.
And this is Rick in West Hope, North Dakota, Independent Line.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
How are you today?
Good.
Well, good.
Hey, you know, there's been a lot of talk about Trump doesn't have the authorization to do this, but under the War Powers Act, a national emergency created by an attack of a foreign power or whatever, he can do this.
I mean, he's kind of going around Congress, but he certainly within the wording of the War Powers Act, he can, he's on some type of legal footing here.
And, you know, there's a lot of historical precedent for this kind of stuff.
I mean, under the UN authorization, which Clinton bombed Yugoslavia, right, during the Balkan Wars over there in the 90s.
There was no threat to our country at all from that.
Obviously, Reagan sent troops into Lebanon, and that turned out real well.
We were not under direct attack there.
Obama in 2011, we had the military actions in Libya, and he justified that by saying he was under UN authorization, and our country certainly was not threatened by Gaddafi at that time.
So there's, if we look at this, if the drugs are so bad in this country, and I think everybody knows that fentanyl is killing lots of people and has killed a lot of people, that would kind of be a threat to our country.
Says that it was a congressional resolution designed to limit the U.S. President's ability to initiate or escalate military actions abroad.
As part of our systems of checks and balances, the law aims to check the executive branch's power when committing U.S. military forces to an armed conflict without the consent of the U.S. Congress.
It stipulates the president must notify Congress within 48 hours of military action and prohibits armed forces from remaining for more than 60 days.
That's without congressional approval.
So you can find out more about that at the Nixon Library.
Paul, Plantation Florida, Republican.
Good morning, Paul.
unidentified
Good morning.
First of all, under international law, there is no safe haven for terrorists.
So all of the experts on law all boil down to in U.S. law, there is no safe haven for terrorists.
Now, I actually heard somebody on this program say we don't know if anything wrong is happening in Venezuela.
Well, their election is not recognized by the United Nations, I don't believe.
It was totally bogus.
So that's one strike against that person.
Another strike is how many people that Maduro, under the communist playbook, has killed the true neighbors who put him in power.
So I just want to say that Trump has more, I have more respect for Trump today than I ever did, and here's why.
He's sacrificing his reputation and whatever for the benefit of this country.
We have 100,000 young people, our best people in this country, being killed by crush.
It's going to do what it takes to stop that.
Right now, the score is 100,000 Venezuela killing Americans, the United States 80.
Number one, under the War Act, you can possibly okay it for terrorists.
But these are drug dealers.
They're criminals, but they're not terrorists.
Number two, wouldn't it make more sense to allow that boat, rather than bomb it, let it go to its destination and track it and find out a little bit more about who they're selling it to.
Okay?
At that point, you could then arrest them, and you have all these people to interrogate and find out where it came from, what kind of drugs are on that boat, and you could just get a lot more information rather than bomb it out of the water.
Steve in Ridgeway, Pennsylvania, Republican, you're on the air, Steve.
unidentified
Good morning.
It's nice to talk to you again.
Well, my thunder has changed several times during the course of the conversation.
Excuse me.
First of all, I'd like to comment on the War Powers Act.
And I've heard many comments and read online, many comments on Washington Journal on Facebook about declarations of war and nobody's declared war and stuff like that.
The last time the United States of America declared war on anybody was in 1942.
So the War Powers Act and everything that people want to talk about declaring war, 1942 is the last time that America declared war.
Now, when it comes to blowing up the boats, we know what's going on.
The last caller said we don't know what's going on.
The heck, we don't know what's going on.
Anybody that has anybody in their family or friends that has either lost or almost lost somebody to the dangers of drugs, whether it's fentanyl or cocaine or what, knows exactly what's going on.
The country is being flooded with illegal drugs, and the best message to send is, you know, fool around, find out, to paraphrase an unpopular phrase.
Now, another thing, too, when talk about one of the callers talked about cocaine being mixed with fentanyl and stuff.
You go to just about any major city, and I'm going to use Buffalo, New York as an example because I spend a lot of time up there.
You'll see billboards warning people to make sure you know the source of your cocaine and your drugs because it could be laced with fentanyl.
These are public service messages in public on billboards in a major city like Buffalo, New York, telling people to make sure that you know where you're getting your drugs and stuff like that because it could be laced with fentanyl.
We're beyond the tipping point.
It's time to take action.
I support the blowing up of the boats.
You know, another thing, my last point is, you know, people want to whine and cry about 82 people killed on suspected Narco boats in the Caribbean.
That's since September of 2025.
I did a search yesterday on how many homicides in Chicago since September of 25.
In September, since September 2025, September 1st, 2025, as of yesterday, there were 108 homicides in Chicago alone.
Nobody cares about those people except their immediate families.
So quick giving about, quit caring about people from foreign countries that want to bring drugs in.
And I support going to Mexico and bombing the hell out of the cartels.
Eliminate the cartels.
Eliminate their compounds.
We got the technology.
We got the resources.
Do it, just like they did to the Iranian nuclear plants.
Drug boats from Venezuela are mainly moving cocaine to Europe, not fentanyl to the U.S. Experts say it says the realities of Latin America's drug trade challenged the administration's stated rationale for its strikes against suspected drug smuggling boats.
That's NBC News.
And this is Senator Chuck Schumer, who was on the floor yesterday.
He called on Secretary Hegseth to release the tapes of the Caribbean drug boat strikes.
Months ago, right after the strikes, Hegseth went on Fox News and bragged.
He was present at every moment of the operation.
He said on Fox News that he, quote, watched it live.
He said the same to us in person.
But then last night he tweeted that his Admiralty was actually, that his admiral was actually the one who made all the combat decisions.
This is so spineless.
Pete Hegseth won't hesitate for a moment to talk a big game and take credit if he thinks it makes him look good.
But the minute trouble arises, suddenly Hegseth says someone else was making the decision.
Now let's be very clear about something.
There's a very easy way for the American people to get the truth.
Pete Hegseth should release the full tapes of the September 2nd attack, both the first and second strike.
Not a clip, not some edited or redacted snippet.
The full unedited tapes of each strike must be released so the American people can see what happened with their own eyes.
Now Pete Hegseth says he did nothing wrong.
So prove it.
If it's true, he should have nothing to fear from the truth.
But if he refuses to release the tapes, if he stonewalls, if he keeps hiding the facts, then the question becomes unavoidable: What is Pete Hegseth hiding?
What does Pete Hegseth not want the American people to see?
Is it that his story doesn't add up?
We don't know because Pete Hegseth is right now hiding the truth.
And sadly, that has become a theme with this administration.
Former Honduras president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, freed after Trump pardon.
It says that he had been sentenced last year to 45 years in prison for his role in a drug trafficking operation that moved hundreds of tons of cocaine to the United States.
He was released from prison yesterday.
Sorry, he was released Monday from a penitentiary in West Virginia.
It says the release of Hernandez, a former U.S. ally whose conviction prosecutors said exposed the depth of cartel influence in Honduras comes just days after the country's presidential election.
Trump defended the decision aboard Air Force One on Sunday, saying Hondurans believed Hernandez had been set up, even as prosecutors argued he protected drug traffickers who moved hundreds of tons of cocaine through the country.
It also unfolds against the backdrop of Trump's aggressive counter-narcotics push that has triggered intense controversy across Latin America.
That's at the Associated Press.
And Glenn in Texas, Republican.
Good morning, Glenn.
unidentified
Well, good lord, C-SPAN.
Glad to be on your show again.
Well, I tell you what, on this drug boat, we have enough military out there in the Caribbean to stop one and investigate exactly what they're carrying and who the people are that are carrying it.
That will shut the Democrats up for good.
Nobody cares about Schumer anymore.
He's lost his clout.
He's on his way out.
That's one way we can find out who is shipping the cocaine in these drug boats and where it was destinated to go.
Now, that's what we need to do on the next boat that comes over the Caribbean.
First of all, the previous caller mentioned, a previous caller mentioned that he thought that the president had already taken over the country.
And I have to echo that sentiment.
I believe that we're pretty close.
I believe that the demonstration of these boats has as much to do with taking civilian oversight of our military away.
In other words, they're dividing once again and trying to make the military confused so that they can either be responsive to congressional oversight or competent civilian authority.
I believe that that's what's at work here.
I believe this is just another step in securing total power for the president.
And this is what Secretary of State Marco Rubio was on Hannity, and this is Fox News.
Marco Rubio says Trump will not be succored by Maduro like Biden.
It says this.
This is his quote.
The Maduro regime is not a legitimate government.
What it is, is a transshipment organization.
It allows cocaine and other drugs that are produced in Colombia to be trafficked through Venezuelan territory and, with the cooperation of elements of the regime, are allowed to leave Venezuela on airplanes and ships headed towards the United States.
It says that's at foxnews.com if you'd like to see that article.
And Angela in Virginia, Independent Line.
Hi, Angela.
unidentified
Good morning.
Thank you for having me on this morning.
I would like to say, as long as we have the separation of the news articles coming out, people have said different scenarios of what is going on.
People who listen to conservative stations like Fox believe one thing and they're said what Fox wants them to hear and other news organizations.
So we have this division of what is actually happening.
But we do know that murder is not acceptable.
Why not stop the boats, find out what's on them, find out who the people are instead of just murdering them out in the middle of the ocean?
I think the president is acting under his authority as commander-in-chief in a way that's consistent with what past administrations have done.
And clearly, there is a has a war has been waged by these drug cartels against the United States, and it has come at a great cost to American citizens.
We've lost tens of thousands of lives in just the past year to these drug cartels.
So I think the president is operating within his authorities.
I think that the fundamental question is, is the country safer than it was under the Biden administration?
I think the answer to that is unequivocally yes.
I think the Trump administration and that the peace through strength policies that they are employing around the world are making our country safer.
And so Secretary Hagseth is a part of that.
He serves at the pleasure of the president.
And I am sure that with regard to the latest question that you all have been raising, that the Senate Armed Services Committee, which is going to look into and get the facts on some of the events that have happened down the Caribbean, that we will get those answers in due time.
But I have every confidence that the policies that this administration is employing when it comes to keeping people in this country safe and ensuring that our policy is one of peace through strength, that those policies are being adhered to and followed.
It just amazes me that Republicans want to claim themselves to be patriots.
When they want to let the president basically operate without any oversight, you have Senator Thune now saying that they want to oversight of the Armed Services Representative Eckert now saying that Republican here saying that oversight is due when Democrats back in October were asking for oversight and briefings on the intelligence of the Trende Agua terrorists.
I'll remind people that the last time a high-level Trende Agua member was caught was under the Biden administration in 2024.
If you look on the Department of Justice website, you'll see that he prosecuted and caught somebody.
Why is it that this administration can't capture any terrorist high-level terrorists or even name one high-level terrorist that's in Venezuela or in the United States?
Also, I'm from Chicago, so they raided a Chicago apartment, landed black copters on top of a roof, and rappelled down and came in like a military force claiming that there was trende agua terrorists in that apartment building.
When you go back and look in the court documents show that zero terrorists were arrested.
So again, Republicans just want to let this president operate like a complete fascist dictator, and they can't claim to be Americans if they don't want to constitute Joshua.
The Geneva Conventions only applies to signatory nations in times of hostile war, and it's written to protect sick and wounded soldiers, prisoners of wars, and innocent civilians.
An narco-trafficker carrying illicit drugs in international waters on a speedboat or a submarine, that's not the innocent civilians I would argue that the conventions would try to protect, even if we're not in hostile conflict with Venezuela.
And the second point: in 1801, the Barbary pirates were menacing the Mediterranean and demanding tribute from U.S. ships.
Thomas Jefferson, with our congressional approval, authorized naval action.
He sent the Marines and the Navy to blockade Tripoli, intercept the menacing ships, and he also bombarded Tripoli and other pirate bases.
And he did it through the War Powers Act with our congressional approval.
What President Trump is doing is no different.
So if you're an arco-trafficker in international waters carrying illicit drugs, I don't have sympathy for you.
We should be going afterwards, after you.
And over the last 40, 50 years, you know, law enforcement action hasn't worked.
I mean, the drugs keep coming.
So something needs to be done to protect our country.
All right, Emilio, that's the last word for that segment, but there's a lot more to come.
Later on, the Washington Journal, we'll be joined by Republican William Timmons of South Carolina, the first of two lawmakers joining us this morning to talk about tensions with Venezuela and the quickly approaching end-of-year deadline to address those expiring ACA subsidies.
But first, after the break, there's new scrutiny of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's role in that follow-up strike on a suspected drug boat.
We'll get the latest from Mike Brest, Pentagon reporter for the Washington Examiner.
We'll be right back.
unidentified
Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series.
This Sunday with our guest, best-selling author Jody Pico, who has written 29 books about a wide range of controversial and moral issues.
Her books include The Storyteller, 19 Minutes, and Her Latest by Any Other Name.
She joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubenstein.
All right, so let's talk first about that second strike on the alleged drug boat in September and what you learned from yesterday's cabinet meeting.
unidentified
So the first thing that we should talk about is that this strike occurred or the series of strikes targeting this vessel was on September 2nd.
And so Secretary Hegset said yesterday that he was in the room when the initial operation happened.
He talked about the fog of war, seeing the wreckage of the vessel.
He then left and went about his day, he said.
And it was after he left the military operators involved in the mission realized that there were survivors clinging to the wreckage.
It was at that point after the Secretary had left that the military senior officer in charge ordered another strike to target the survivors of the initial operation.
And so the Secretary was very clear in saying that he supported the Admiral's decision to carry out the follow-up strike, but he was not in the room for it and did not know about it before it occurred.
And does that comport kind of with your reporting that Secretary Hagseth was not in the room when that second strike happened?
unidentified
So it's hard to tell because all of this information about this first strike is coming out now, now almost more than two months later.
And so a lot of the reporting that myself and other journalists in the national security realm have focused on have been the continuation of these strikes, not looking at necessarily the first one.
And so there have been more than 20 of these operations targeting various vessels that the government says are coming from Venezuela carrying drugs to the United States, and they've killed more than 80 people at this point.
What are the sources for that second strike that killed the two survivors?
unidentified
So it's unclear exactly where some of the anonymous reporting is coming from, but we can only take some of that reporting with a grain of salt and combine it with the acknowledgments we have from defense officials who have come out and spoken publicly, like the Secretary.
So Admiral Frank Bradley will be talking to lawmakers tomorrow.
This is a closed, classified briefing.
C-SPAN cameras will not be there, unfortunately.
But will there be a readout?
Will we find out what happened?
unidentified
So I'm sure that the lawmakers who are very eager to hear from him will be coming back and speaking to the media about what they heard.
And so you're right that we, I would love to be a fly on the wall of that briefing room, but we won't be there because it's a closed-door briefing.
And so hopefully he'll be there to answer their questions and then those lawmakers will likely leave and be able to inform reporters whether or not he was able to satisfy their questions.
Now some lawmakers have said that this could amount to a war crime.
Has that ever happened before that there has been accusations of war crimes and then what happens?
unidentified
So there have been throughout the history of the U.S. military several instances where there are accusations of war crimes dating back to various conflicts.
And so there are investigations.
There can be demotions or people held responsible for decisions that were made in the fog of war.
Now, the Wall Street Journal actually on the front page is talking about Secretary Hegseth, and their headline is: Hegseth has long sought new rules for war.
It talks about the controversy around his statements, calling them, you know, he's complained about, quote, stupid rules of engagement and talked about it in his book.
What do we know about where he stands on this idea of no, you cannot strike, you know, combatants that have been disabled and can't fight anymore?
unidentified
So, as you said, I think a great place to look for Secretary Hegseth's personal ideology on the subject is his own writing and his own discussions before he was in the position he's currently in.
And so, when you look back at even the book he wrote, a theme of that and how what he's carried over into his term as Secretary of Defense or Secretary of War is that people in Washington, in his opinion, should not be dictating the way active duty service members carry out their operations.
You know, he doesn't believe that politicians who are not in jeopardy on the front line should necessarily be policing the way service members are carrying out life and death situations.
And besides this classified briefing tomorrow, what else is planned on the Hill around this topic?
unidentified
So, the Secretary himself is expected to address the Pentagon's new media corps later today if that goes on as scheduled.
And so, there are, we could expect to see additional briefings if the Senate Armed Services and House Armed Services Committee are not satisfied with whatever comes of tomorrow's briefing with Admiral Bradley.
So, it's unclear exactly what the pathway forward is, but we know that lawmakers are itching to get more information about not just the second strike of the first operation, but the entire strategy so far and moving forward.
He's a defense reporter for the Washington Examiner.
You can go ahead and start giving us a call now if you'd like to talk to him.
Republicans are on 202-748-8001, Democrats 202-748-8000, and Independents 202-748-8002.
And our line for active and former military is 202-748-8003.
I want to ask you about the Pentagon, has said that they will conduct a thorough review of Senator Mark Kelly.
He's obviously former military.
He's a retired Navy captain.
Tell us where that stands now.
unidentified
So, the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, has asked the Secretary of the Navy, John Phelan, to conduct this interview that you mentioned, and he's expecting a readout of that investigation around this time next week.
And so, we should or could see movement on this as early as the middle of next week when this Hegseth deadline comes through.
So, Secretary Hegseth, or excuse me, Secretary Hegseth has called for an investigation into Senator Mark Kelly and the five other Democrats who participated in this video that came out about two weeks ago now, in which they warned service members not to carry out illegal orders.
And so, it was a little bit of a double negative there, even in their delivery.
And so, their belief is that service members needed a reminder not to carry out illegal orders and that they personally can be held responsible if they do so.
That is long-standing U.S. law dating back to the Vietnam War.
You cannot use the my commander told me to as a defense of committing a war crime.
So the Secretary and the Pentagon believe these six Democrats, even though they were repeating factual U.S. law, they were subtly trying to undermine both the Secretary and the President's agenda of what they're trying to accomplish.
And so Secretary Hagseth has ordered the interview, or the, excuse me, has ordered the investigation into Senator Mark Kelly because he's the only one of the six that are still legally required to abide by the UCMJ or the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
And so this investigation of the Navy's carrying out could play out in a number of different ways.
Some of the military legal experts have told me that they don't believe accurately repeating U.S. law is worthy of a crime.
However, there are different laws that adjudicate the UCMJ versus these traditional law.
And that's why, even though we could in theory see an investigation by the Department of Justice, we haven't yet.
So in theory, if, and this is, again, dependent upon the Navy's review, but they could recommend that Senator Mark Kelly is brought back to active duty to be court-martialed, in which he could face charges under the UCMJ.
However, that is getting ahead of ourselves a little bit in terms of not knowing what exactly the Navy review will find.
And typically, the people in the military that are going to determine, you know, this is legal order, this is according to the laws of war, are JAG officers.
Tell us about their role and where we are with the top JAG officers in the military currently.
unidentified
So it's interesting you brought that up because Secretary Hagseth earlier this year dismissed many of the top judge advocate generals, their JAG officers, who essentially provide somewhat of a check on the way the military is operating.
They often will provide either a green light or somewhat of a red light in terms of the conduct potentially being carried out.
And what was the rationale that he gave for dismissing them?
unidentified
There was little rationale given at the time.
And so one of the things that we're seeing now is between his comments to tie in our whole conversation to his comments about sort of restrictions placed on military from Washington, he also sort of lumps in JAG officers into that collective burden that he feels sort of outsiders are placing on the way service members carry out their operations.
They are, I would say, checks on the way the people on the front lines operate.
And so anyway, for anyone who is not right there in the front lines, he says he will have service members' backs.
And there is a lot of comments to believe that these are the types of situations he's talking about in which there may be some concern about the legality, but he will come to their defense as he has with Admiral Bradley.
All right, let's talk to callers and we'll start with James in Akron, Ohio, Democrat.
James, good morning.
You're on with Mike Brest.
unidentified
Yes.
I have a couple of problems.
First of all, this thing will not mute.
Why?
Well, I don't understand.
We got this stuff going on.
Donald Trump's saying he knows nothing about anything.
He has said, according to him, he's the most uninformed person in the world.
And generals and people in the military, they have been interviewed several times over the years stating the same things that these people put on recording.
I don't understand what they're trying to do.
First of all, we are blowing up people way on the other side of the world.
I'm not a lawyer, so I'll leave that to the people who are experts.
I think he raised an interesting point, which is about the drugs themselves.
And so most of the drugs that come from Venezuela actually is cocaine and it comes through Colombia.
America widely views fentanyl as one of the most deadly drugs available on the black market.
And so fentanyl does not, for the most part, come from Venezuela.
It comes from Mexico.
And so that's why the president has, for several months now, talked here and there about possible drone strikes in Mexico targeting drug cartel labs there.
And so the chemicals that the Mexican drug cartels use to create fentanyl from China.
And that's why FBI Director Kash Patel went to China last month to talk about trying to restrict the sales of these precursor chemicals to North America.
And so it's still unclear how committed the Chinese are to this mission in terms of this latest announcement from the FBI director.
But fentanyl largely comes from Mexico.
And the Trump administration largely views the Mexican president, Claudio Schombine, as an allied who's overpowered.
Whereas when you compare it to Venezuela, they view Nicolas Maduro as the head of the snake.
And so even though it's cocaine and not fentanyl that's coming from Venezuela, the Trump administration stances that the illegitimate leader of the country, Nicolas Maduro, is the kingpin, for lack of a better words, the head of the snake, as opposed to in Mexico where they see a beleaguered ally in need.
I find it a little confusing that everybody's up in arms about striking these boats in Venezuela because the people supposedly couldn't defend themselves.
What about the 60,000 women and children that just died over the last couple of years in Gaza?
How come there's no big inquiries or questions about that?
Congress doesn't seem to be too concerned about that.
I think it's an interesting point about where we put our energy and what we focus on.
The war in Gaza was a horrible conflict spanning two years, and it feels like the administration is slowly inching towards success in the region and creating a more stable Gaza.
But there's still several unanswered questions in the region, particularly about is Hamas willing to demilitarize?
Is Hezbollah willing to demilitarize in Lebanon below the Latani River, which they were obligated to do based on that ceasefire, whether or not Iran is trying to rebuild its nuclear program.
And so while there is somewhat of a simmering in the Middle East, there are a lot of unanswered questions.
It's laughable to me how to say this is a war on drugs.
And all these people that was killed by the drugs coming in from Venezuela, but still yet he goes and pardon someone that was convicted, convicted of killing all these people as a kingpin of drugs.
It makes no sense to me.
And the Republicans just sit there and say nothing.
The president's pardon of the former Honduran president accused of leading a drug operation was a little surprising.
It was surprising to me.
And the administration and the president himself have alleged that the Biden DOJ was somehow involved in some sort of nefarious behavior behind the conviction.
But the investigation into the Honduran president started during President Trump's first term.
And so I do think it'll be interesting to see if there's any additional fallout or any additional questions from Capitol Hill about what prompted it.
I think he raises an interesting point, which is that the Secretary and the President in the White House have gone out of their way to be very explicit in that neither the President nor the Secretary were aware of the follow-up strikes until after they occurred.
And so there are Democrats on Capitol Hill who are suggesting that the administration is doing so with the intent to try and create some distance between themselves and this particular strike, even though they broadly supported the operation.
And so it's unclear exactly how that will play out or if there will be any fallout towards Admiral Bradley directly.
But I do think the fact that the administration is going out of their way to publicly put a face to this second strike or secondary strikes and distance themselves from it should be an indication that there is some concern on the part of the White House.
I think there is the interesting point that we haven't really talked about much, which is what does an expansion of this current operation look like?
And it centers around Nicolas Maduro.
And so the President has said he's spoken with Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.
The president has also said previously that he has approved the CIA to carry out covert operations in Venezuela.
And he periodically talks about having approved strikes on Venezuelan soil, even though we haven't seen any yet.
And so it raises the question of if the military, if he gives the green light to the military to carry out strikes on Venezuelan soil, what would be the target and is the objective the permanent removal of Nicolas Maduro from power?
Let's talk to Brian in Georgia, Independent Outline.
Go ahead, Brian.
unidentified
Yes, good morning.
Good morning, Mimi and Mr. Bress.
My question is that in prior years, I guess specifically before, let's say the Korean conflict, that when we as Americans looked at issues that were affecting our country,
which certainly the influx of drugs and fentanyl and opioids and other narcotics has been a negative stain on our country, we've taken a much more bipartisan,
much more unified approach to trying to eliminate the scourge and trying to stop negative things from happening to our country and happening to our citizens.
And I guess my question for you, Mr. Bress, is, you know, how do we change that dynamic?
How do we change that viewpoint and take this from being a bipartisan or political issue that becomes this discussion about whether or not President Trump was involved in some kind of war crime and whether or not the quote-unquote seditious six or whether Senator Kelly or Senator Slotkin are involved in some kind of seditious behavior,
whether or not the Washington Post is making a true reporting or whether or not the New York Times is making a proper reporting or we've got so much conflict in reporting and analytical angles of this issue.
unidentified
And my question for you as the Washington insider is, what do we do to make this a much more unified concern to do?
And so we're talking about drug boats and we're talking about individuals that the military has killed, but we're also talking about the people who have overdosed in the past and their loved ones.
And so I mentioned the number of people who died of fentanyl overdoses in 2023, but the total number of people who have overdosed every year is around 100,000.
And they have family members who are missing their loved ones.
And so it's remembering that the ultimate objective should be to prevent overdose deaths, however that happens.
And there should be several angles Washington can and should take to prevent that.
This would be the Admiral overseeing U.S. Southern Command.
He retired early.
Tell us about that.
unidentified
So he actually is expected.
His formal retirement is the end of next week.
And so he announced his retirement about eight weeks in advance.
And so he has announced his decision to retire about one year into what is usually a three-year term.
And so he has not given any public remarks since he announced his retirement.
And so it has led a lot of speculation into why someone who has dedicated their life to this service would suddenly announce their retirement one year into a three-year term of a position that they are holding at the culmination of their life's work.
And so we are still waiting to hear why exactly he has chosen to resign.
But I do think to go back to the question of possible oversight, once he retires, I do think we could see him potentially take a trip to Capitol Hill to talk to lawmakers.
I think right now he's probably very focused on the mission at hand.
And I think he has a little bit more flexibility probably both in his schedule and in his ability to talk to lawmakers once he is no longer in his position.
At about 9 a.m. Eastern Time on the Washington Journal, we'll talk with Sean VanDiver, founder and president of Afghan EVAC.
It's a nonprofit run by American veterans helping to evacuate and resettle Afghans who assisted the U.S. during the two-decade war.
But first, right after the break, we'll have Republican William Timmons of South Carolina, the first of two lawmakers on the program, will talk about the tensions with Venezuela and the quickly approaching end of year deadline to address those expiring ACA subsidies.
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The Military Times has reported that a group of former JAGs have warned that the actions of the Defense Secretary and others ordering those special operations to kill everybody aboard would constitute a war crime, murder, or both.
Do you have any reaction to that?
I don't know if you saw that article.
unidentified
I would be very interested to see how they're registered and what state they're from.
Again, this is all politics.
It's no different than the senators and house members that told service members to disobey illegal orders.
I mean, this is all politics, and it's terrible because our service members are just trying to do their job.
They're trying to protect America and keep us safe.
And so to insert politics into it is not appropriate.
Any illegal order should be disobeyed, but legal orders should be obeyed.
And the military justice system exists for a reason.
So again, this is all politics.
And I want Americans to be safe.
I want to stop talking to my constituents about how sad I am that their loved one died from a fentanyl overdose.
So we're going to continue to hold the cartels accountable, and we're going to continue to do everything we can to keep Americans safe.
In February, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth fired the Air Force's and Army's top JAG officers, and he commissioned his personal lawyer as the Navy JAG.
Does that concern you at all?
unidentified
I've served in the military for eight years now, and what the last administration did to our military is unforgivable.
They attempted to use the military to insert their DEI policies, and the military has to be the last bastion of pure merit.
And so I don't care what color the skin is or what gender the person is next to me, I want them to be the best.
And we saw again and again in the last administration that they promoted people not based off of merit.
And so, yes, we did have to make some changes because we need to have the right people in the right seat on the bus.
And so, no, I'd have no problem with the Secretary cleaning house because it was long overdue.
Switching now to the war in Ukraine, Axios reports that the Trump advisor, Steve Witkoff, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, have met with Russian President Putin in the Kremlin.
Where do you think the peace plan stands right now as far as the Russia-Ukraine war and if you worry that it leans too heavily towards Russia at this point?
Or what are your thoughts?
unidentified
I think they're currently negotiating an end to a war that should have never happened.
And again, bad administrations, bad policies have consequences.
And the way that President Biden withdrew from Afghanistan is the reason that we're in this situation.
So I'm kind of shocked that President Trump hasn't been able to end this war yet, but I have a feeling it's happening soon.
I think it's important for people to realize that in the last 10, 11 months, the president has negotiated an end to six, seven different conflicts.
So we are moving in the right direction.
We are leading.
Peace through strength works, but you've got to be strong in order to pursue that objective.
So the president is showing the world that we're not to be trifled with.
Our allies, again, trust us.
Our enemies, again, fear us.
So it's going to take time, but we're going to get the war in Ukraine finished up and the world's going to be better off for it.
William in Houston, Texas, Democrat, you're on the air.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
Good morning, Cease Van Hawes.
Right quick to that young man that just got you talking to him concerning DNI and the military.
Here's a reason right now that the military that I grew up in is a Vietnam veteran.
That minorities don't make up 65 to 70 percent of the force.
They wouldn't complain about DI when they were snatching us out of the fields in Arkansas, Mississippi, and everywhere she knows Vietnam.
But fast forward to now.
This is simple.
If that admiral is convicted of violating the UMCMJ or the legal order, everybody down below him is convicted that he's in charge, especially those Navy SEALs.
So this is what happens when you take a, if you need a Guinness, and you go get someone that'll repair a lawnmower.
Well, I am always really nervous when I start a call.
So, and that's on top of having a radio career 50 years ago.
But I'm telling you, every time I get started, I have to try to get my heart right down to under 200.
But so I tried to call, to make just a couple of points, if you'll allow me.
One is on Thanksgiving that I tried to get on last week and just couldn't get through.
And the other is on the Supreme Court case that's being heard.
If I could make those two quick points.
The first is the reasons why the pilgrims, and this will take two minutes or less.
The pilgrims left Holland, not England, when they migrated to America.
And they wrote the three reasons why they left.
And they're so incredibly valuable and important to us in our history.
They said they left because they wanted to save their children.
That they were, they used two words.
They said they were falling into desoluteness and licentiousness.
Those mean the same thing.
Bill, look those up.
And the other was to find an easier place to live.
They said they were getting older before their time.
And the third reason was to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ to the new world.
Now, those are the three reasons they left Holland, not England.
So I just wanted to convey that, to look that up for Thanksgiving.
And the other point that I wanted to make was that I listened to the Supreme Court hearings that you carried last week on the tariffs, and it's the most boring subject.
I'm a retired history teacher, and I tell you, I understand it's the most boring subject ever until this has come up with President Trump pushing for these tariffs, which are the most valuable, important thing for the United States.
And I say that to make the point about William McKinley was responsible for bringing tariffs into such a focus during his presidency, and he made the United States the richest country in the history of the world.
And so I kept watching the Supreme Court case last week, thinking, oh, they're going to be talking about William McKinley the whole time, and he never came up.
So I'm just asking people to please call your senator.
I have, I've called my two senators and my representative to please convey their support to get that message out to their representatives in the Supreme Court to uphold these tariffs in place.
First of all, I guess that previous caller hasn't heard about the commercial companies buying up all the properties and doing that stuff and not the immigrants.
And second of all, I'd like to make a, I don't know if this is an educational purpose or not, but how Donald Trump always says, I just heard the congressman say something earlier about how he only says this war, it would never happen if I was in charge.
I just want to let every viewer here know that's called a counterfactual claim.
And it's counterfactual reasoning.
And basically it means, and if you give me a second, I'm just going to explain this because it drives me nuts.
This is going across the country everywhere.
And I just want one person to explain this is what it is.
The definition is it's an assertion about a reality that did not occur.
It's used to draw conclusions about the current state of affairs or the speaker's superior competence.
The purpose is it cannot be proven false, which makes it a powerful political or personal maneuver as it places the speaker above accountability for the actual event.
Hindsight bias.
While this is a cognitive error, cognitive error, it often underlies the speaker's confidence when making his claim.
The tendency to perceive events that have already occurred as having been more predictable than they actually were.
And I would like to bring up a point that may be more constructive than just repeating what has been out there.
We have a lot of levels and moving parts to the legal, the moral, and the ethical issues that are involved here.
And we will find out over time what the actual facts are to work with.
But I want to point out this something that's easily Googled.
You can find us online.
It costs $6 to $8 million per day to keep the fleet in the Caribbean and to bring it here per day.
And it's sitting there doing nothing while we have other problems in the rest of the world.
It costs approximately $10 million a day to keep the so-called narcotics operations going in the Caribbean.
And that doesn't count either the air flights or the munitions that are involved to attack speedboats, speedboats.
When you do the mass, it's coming out to $600 million per month, which is $180 million, rounding it off for the last three months to be keeping this whole operation going where the mighty United States is basically stepping on small speedboats, which we're not even sure exactly what their status are.
So I think I'd like to point out to the rest of America, which is usually concerned about the finances behind things, that the foundation for this is questionable.
Alan, Minnesota, Democrat, you're on the air, Alan.
unidentified
Hi.
Well, the Omega people, It just doesn't make any logic.
Anyway, a lot of the people that all these deaths in the United States, I guess, that they claim a lot of it are the parents that's how they teach their kids, Generation X and why their failures in raising their kids is they got to blame somebody.
So let's go kill the people on the boats.
And another point, everybody knows Pete Hex got radicalized when he was in Afghan for 20 years in Iraq, 20 years over there.
He advocated for all the war criminals that were over there just shooting everybody up.
Willy-Nilly, he advocated for them to be released.
And one more thing, Pete put out a tweet before all this came out about the second strike on the boat.
He put out the tweet.
You can look it up.
It says, kill everybody.
So, you know, there's your answer right there.
And now he's distancing himself from the whole thing.
He said that essentially people should stop delaying death by giving medical care.
I do believe that that's what he said.
That's the first thing.
And the second thing is that, you know, the stories from, you know, like I'm a foundational black American, the stories from my family of having to run or be hung.
I'll just say that I don't think America has changed at all because just like they used to hang black people without evidence, without a lot of evidence for doing something they didn't do, now they're blown up.
They just blow the speedboats now.
So it's the same.
So I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
White America hasn't changed at all.
They do things without having a ton of evidence or even a good amount of evidence.
So, Stephen, regarding what the congressman said, you can go back and watch the entire thing on our website, c-span.org.
We've got all of our Washington Journal segments there.
If you miss anything, you can always go back.
It's Dr. Clyde, Queens, New York, Independent Line.
Good morning, Clyde.
unidentified
Good morning.
How you doing, Mimi?
Good.
Here it is.
We should expect this from somebody who's totally incompetent for the job.
You know, you're talking about DEI.
I heard this guy say this he's totally incompetent.
But here it is.
He's gotten rid of top-notch generals and what have you.
And he's gotten rid of all the JAG officers.
This way, he can run Russia any way he wants.
Then he gets on, we get on, I watch C-SPAN, and I watch what the border director, the Homeland Border Directors are saying.
Most of the drugs are coming in, 85% of them are coming in on trucks, and they're not immigrants.
The second thing is, and most of the drugs are coming from Mexico.
They're not coming in from Venezuela.
And these little speedboats, which you only have very shallow, what have you, the very shallow speedboats, they only can go about 200 miles.
And here it is, Venezuela is over 2,000 miles away.
And if they're going to, if they're, and they're killing these people with no evidence whatsoever, and tech said it's saying, we know who these people are, we know where they come from, we know where they live, then here it is.
They better come up with the proof because this guy, this general is going to be another Ali North, and he's falling on the sword for these guys of total incompetence.
So Afghan EVAC is an organization dedicated to making sure that the United States and our allies follow through on the promises that we made to locally employed staff and others who served our mission or stood up for the idea for democracy over our 20-year war in Afghanistan.
Everybody remembers the pictures of Afghans falling off of planes desperate to get out.
Afghan EVAC stood up during the fall of Kabul.
I got a call from my friend Lucky.
He said, brother, I'm stuck on this mountain or goon.
I think I'm going to die.
Will you grant my last wish and get my family back to San Diego?
Now, I didn't serve in Afghanistan.
I served off the coast of Iraq, off the coast of Africa, all over South America in the Global War on Drugs.
But this fight is my fight because how we close out our longest war really matters.
It matters to me.
It matters to veterans all over this country and frontline civilians and others who served in our longest wars.
And look, we've got to follow through on this.
And it was working during the last administration.
And it's been reported that that alleged shooter that fired on the National Guard and killed one member and critically wounded another came into the United States through Operation Allies Welcome in September of 2021.
Can you tell us about that program and how many Afghans came into the United States through that program?
So first off, our hearts go out to the tragic, to the families of the two National Guardsmen who were shot, critically injured, and killed last week.
It's an awful situation.
Nobody should ever have to experience the scourge of gun violence that our country has all the time.
Operation Allies Welcome brought in about 77,000 Afghans.
Allies Welcome was the emergency evacuation of Afghanistan.
It only lasted a few months, and that was getting people on planes, getting them vetted before they got on those planes, getting them vetted after they arrived in the third country, more vetting before they left, even more vetting when they arrived, more vetting while they were here, and continual vetting until they got to permanent status.
Many of those folks never got to permanent status or haven't yet.
And then Operation, or not Operation, Enduring Welcome is the long-term end-to-end comprehensive policy to keep our promises to our wartime allies that Afghan EVEC built with the Biden administration.
It's our strongest, safest, most secure legal immigration pathway in our country's history.
And all told between Allies Welcome and Enduring Welcome, there's about 195,000 Afghans that have come into the country.
So remember, screening and vetting is all about who are you connected to?
What are you doing?
Are you connected to terrorist organizations?
Are you committing crimes?
Are you doing things that are not compatible with coming to the United States?
Now, the truth is, our vetting is insanely secure.
For refugees, especially, it's the gold standard around the world.
It looks like multi-agency checks, certainly the Department of Defense or Department of War, if you're Pete Hegseth, the Central Intelligence Agency, other intelligence community agencies, the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection, USCIS, international law enforcement, local law enforcement.
It's this comprehensive multi-agency interagency effort to make sure that all of our watch lists are checked and all of that.
And that happens over and over and over for these folks.
So when Christy Noam and Donald Trump and JD Vance and Kash Patel get up and Pam Bondi get up and lie to the American public and say that the vetting didn't occur, that's just not true.
It's also an absolute fact that the Trump administration also vetted these folks, vetted this man in particular.
He got both chief of mission approval for his special immigrant visa program and asylum approved in April of 2025.
You know, we're still going through all of that information, and I'll let the FBI and DOJ reveal new information.
But I will say we believe he was radicalized since he's been here in this country.
We do believe it was through connections in his home community and state, and we're going to continue to talk to those who interacted with him, who were his family members, talked to them.
So far, we've had some participation, but anyone who has information on this needs to know that we will be coming after you, and we will bring you to justice.
We absolutely will persecute you because we do know that we will never allow this to continue to happen in our country.
Allow individuals who came to our country that were unvetted by Joe Biden, allowed to run free and loose.
We are going to bring them to justice and make sure that they're returned out of this country if they aren't here for the purposes of being an American.
Well, I'd say Secretary Noam needs to work on her definitions.
I don't think we've seen anything yet that has shown that he was radicalized.
There's been no indication, and you can rest assured that this PR machine government would be waving the flag of terrorism if there was something to indicate that he'd been radicalized, which means that he was working with some terrorist organization or some bad actor.
What all the evidence seems to point to is that this man was experiencing extraordinary amounts of PTSD.
I used to run a veterans nonprofit called Three Wise Men Veterans Foundation, and we were focused on reducing the stigma associated with PTSD.
This man was exhibiting, as far as all the news reporting is showing, telltale signs.
I don't know that he was radicalized.
I think he was brought here.
And to be clear, there's no reason, excuse, ideology for what he did.
He must be held to full account for his crimes, just like we're holding to account the two veterans from back in September who committed mass shootings several states apart and 13 hours apart.
This man needs to be treated like the criminal that he is.
And the gaps that we are identifying are not with our vetting process.
They're with, first, how we treat the people who fight our wars for us, both American military veterans and our wartime allies.
Once they finish that, this man was 15 years old when we handed him a gun and said, go kill people for us.
And then we brought him here and allowed him to isolate himself in his room.
And lots of people tried to get him help back in 2024 and he never got it.
It was offered.
He declined.
And then this year he was asking for help from the CIA.
The other gap is that President Trump and Christy Noam and all of these folks is from loan shooters.
They doged this entire program and then reallocated all these federal law enforcement resources to political stunts at Home Depot and snatching teachers out of classrooms and snatching old grandmas from immigration courts.
So it sort of depends on when they got here and who they are, right?
So for the folks that arrived during Operation Allies Welcome, most of those people arrived on a temporary status called parole.
They were brought out of Kabul to a third country, brought from a third country to a U.S. military base here, and then released into the community after extraordinary amounts of vetting with instructions to either get their SIVs or apply for asylum.
Many of those folks are still in that process, so they are in shaky legal ground, right?
They should be protected because there's nowhere for them to go.
When we built Enduring Welcome, the idea was that people would arrive here on a durable status, fully vetted, ready to start their American dream when they arrived.
So most of those folks arrived either as refugees or as lawful permanent residents or as family of American citizens or LPR.
So everybody who arrives through Enduring Welcome arrived on a durable status, which means that they should be able to stay.
But what we're seeing the administration make noise about is stripping that permanent status away from people, stripping LPR status, stripping, they're even talking about denaturalizing people.
So we're really worried that they're going to try to take people out of status and then remove them.
In fact, right now, ICE is calling up Afghans around this country, asking them to come in for check-ins, and then snatching them or going to their homes.
I got a call from a woman in New York yesterday, last night before I went to bed.
She was absolutely overcome with grief because her husband had been snatched out of their house in front of their three-year-old, handcuffed in front of their three-year-old, and marched out of there for doing nothing just because he was Afghan.
And this administration is trying to ascribe to an entire population one man's actions.
Now, our immigration system is complex and convoluted and meant to be hard for everyone.
So not having TPS or not having parole anymore, you are subject to removal unless you have an asylum application or any sort of pending action before an immigration court.
Now, what the government is trying to do right now, and I know this because I've been in immigration court a bunch, is they're trying to dismiss cases.
And then once the government requests to dismiss it in immigration court, they're snatching them up outside in the hallways.
So in response to that, Afghan EVAC and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America launched something called Battle Buddies, where veterans, frontline civilians, and anyone involved in the evacuation ecosystem can sign up to go stand shoulder to shoulder with our wartime allies in court, like they did with us when we were in their country.
We're standing with them while they're fighting for their lives and ours.
I think the perspective everybody has to have right now is that chaos is the name of the game.
And chaos was the goal of President Putin in Russia stated two years ago, and that was a press release that he had stated he hoped to seed chaos in America.
If you look around, what do you see?
Flip-floppers.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, this opinion, then that opinion.
Other important members of Congress suddenly flip-flopping on important issues.
I mean, it is my position that we shouldn't believe anything that is coming from a podium in Washington right now.
Christy Noom is a liar.
Donald Trump is a liar.
Kash Patel is a liar.
Pam Bondi's a liar.
JD Vance is certainly a liar.
I wish that that wasn't true.
I came up in the United States military.
I've been somebody who's worked across the aisle for a long time.
And I think we can trust.
It's really upsetting to me that we can't trust what people are saying in Washington.
And also, they're not the ones doing the vetting.
The vetting is happening at the line level.
And there's so many extraordinary people working across the federal government right now who are doing what they have to do.
And a lot of people have quit.
A lot of people have been fired.
There's a lot of good people in government.
And I'm not ready to give up on America yet.
I think our country has to have a strong conversation about where we're at and get back to reality and get away from these 90-second soundbite gotchas.
Bill, thank you so much for asking those questions.
Those are really important questions.
Number one, I can order on Uber Eats and have it here before I'm off this show, right?
Technology has enabled a lot of things to happen faster than they've ever happened before, right?
And we also have advanced AI and all sort of things happening now that make things smarter, faster, better.
The answer to your first question is how long it takes?
It depends.
It depends on how much information we have.
The good news is, no matter what the president's telling you, we have a ton of information on this population.
We have more information on the Afghan population than we do on most other populations.
And in fact, it took us so much longer to vet these folks because of the amount of information to sift through.
Now, you said something that 195,000 people came here in 16 days.
That's not true.
About 70,000 people came here in those 16 days.
And then it took us another four years, three and a half years, to get the balance to other 120-some-odd thousand people here because of how fast the vetting was, or because of how in-depth the vetting was.
And it's so important that you know that a lot of the people that are right now saying that the vetting wasn't happening and the Republican talking heads making a bunch of noise about vetting are the same people who were calling the White House and calling us to say, hey, can you get my guy out?
Hey, make this happen faster.
Hey, do the vetting elsewhere.
But the Biden administration deserves a little bit of credit for not cowing to those demands.
They took their time.
They made sure that people were vetted before they left the airport.
And there may have been a few that slipped through there, but nobody slipped through once they got to a third country.
If they made it to a third country, UAE, Qatar, a few others, Germany, a full round of vetting was done.
And if you didn't screen, you didn't come here.
You went to Kosovo, where they underwent even more screening.
If they couldn't pass vetting, they didn't get to come here.
People who came to the United States had all passed vetting, and then they had to get through CBP at the port of entry.
They got more vetting.
If something popped up later on, if something was discovered, if they did something, they were removed from the country and sent to Kosovo for more vetting.
If they didn't screen, they couldn't come back here.
So what I would say is that our vetting is very strong.
It works very well.
And that's why Kash Patel's own FBI found that the FBI did everything it was supposed to do and that the vetting worked as late as June 2025.
And he does have a wife and five children in Washington State.
And they were very concerned that he had locked himself in the room.
And he would come out.
He would also go on long drives.
It was not uncharacteristic for him to go on for days at a time.
What we had heard and what has been reported in the Associated Press and in Rolling Stone is that he was suffering from deep mental anguish related to his service to our country.
And that's why, look, I don't think that this event is a scandal.
I think that this terrible shooting and loss of one National Guardsman and critical injury of another is a tragic story about how we take care of our service members and veterans.
I think that nothing excuses what he did and he's got to be held to account to the full extent of the law.
And it is a grave mistake to let the president and his team ascribe to a whole population one man's actions.
Let me bring this narrative back to where it should be.
Please give me time.
I can get everyone else.
George Bush started this war, Republican.
Donald Trump set up this surrender deal in Afghanistan with the Taliban.
It was going to bring them to Camp David.
What I've actually noticed about a lot of you military guys, you know, you support Trump secretly.
And this guy is how he's disrespected you all and everyone's family ever served.
But on to what's happening with Afghanistan, I just want you to answer a few questions.
A lot of these guys, man, you know, was brought over here by Republicans.
A lot of you special forces and people in the military set up nonprofits and different type of stuff, went over there and got people, rescued them out of Iraq.
This is what I'm talking about.
Republicans, you can pull up the clips.
They were supporting this Russian Biden.
Biden had to make a decision.
They was not even corresponding with Biden administration when they took over during the transition and stuff because they were setting up these deals.
Trump wanted to bring the Taliban to Camp David to talk about this deal.
He set it up.
Biden had to make a decision.
And what happened was, you know, which I can't understand, Republicans are making this out like Biden was responsible for it.
Those Afghans that actually blew up, those are the people who Trump was talking to him, negotiating with, I guess that's what you all call it, during the time he was in office.
He did not stop this war.
The Democrats, Obama, and Biden did not start this war.
Yeah, look, Darrell, what I would say is you're right that President Trump negotiated with the Taliban and did not invite the Ghani government in.
You're right that they didn't correspond with the Biden administration.
You're right that President Trump had a lot to say about President Biden's performance during the withdrawal.
And you're right that he marched the families of our final 13 fallen out on the stage at the RNC and talked about it during every debate.
I agree with you that this is wholesale hypocrisy from the Republican Party.
And the truth is that 90% of the American public supports the Afghan population.
The truth is that we have an obligation to these folks because we sent diplomats and service members downrange to make promises in our name, and President Trump is turning us all into liars.
President Biden turned us into liars before he built Enduring Welcome.
I don't think we have any reason to be happy with anybody in Washington right now.
Congress won't even pass a law to help protect these folks.
I think we have every reason to be pissed off, but I wouldn't blame the military.
The military is not, I'm not a secret Republican.
I worked on President Biden's campaign.
I worked on Hillary Clinton's campaign.
I've worked on a bunch of Democratic campaigns because I believe in the values and principles of the Democratic Party.
I also believe in the values and principles of bipartisanship to do something good for our country, which is what we've done with Afghan EVAC.
Aggain EVAC is a nonpartisan organization fighting everybody for our wartime allies' benefit to make sure that they get to reach the American dream that they were promised.
Let's take one more call to Celine Arlington, Virginia, Republican.
Good morning, Celine.
unidentified
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I would like to say, I'm not sure about this individual case, but I thought I heard that he was shouting something like, Allah is the greatest, or something like that, Islamic slogan.
I think that's against our Constitution.
And whatever status, the people coming, overall, I think when we accept immigrants, we should consider their value system.
And also, this guy, he has a hard time to assimilate to our society.
That's the issue.
And no matter he came legally or illegally, he had a problem assimilating to our community.
And in my own community, I saw a lot of people.
They are here like so many years.
They still hang on to their own, like whenever the U.S. is not in favor of their own government or countries, they always, you know, they stand with their own government.
What I'm going to say is it's probably really hard to assimilate when people keep pulling the rug out from under you.
Afghans are doing a great job assimilating, in my estimation.
And also, we took away their SNAP benefits.
We took away their housing benefits.
We took away their mental health benefits.
We painted this picture of an American dream that they were promised because they stood with us.
They fought with us.
They stood and befriended Americans and took care of us overseas for 20 years.
And they get here and it's a punch in the face after punch in the face after punch in the face.
So I think that what you said to me, Celine, I believe that you're wrong.
I think that they, in fact, do assimilate just fine despite all of the roadblocks that are thrown in their way by an inept and ineffective American government.
Millions of people across the country tuned into C-SPAN.
That was a made-for-C-SPAN moment.
If you watch on C-SPAN, you're going to see me physically across the aisle every day, just trying to build relationships and try to understand their perspective and find common ground.
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You know, I don't think it's any surprise that he won.
Trump won this district by 22 points, and the former representative did nearly as well.
But I think what is the real surprise here is that he only won by nine points.
And this should not have even been close.
In fact, the Republicans, just to hold on to the seat, had to spend millions of dollars, and Trump himself had to spend over a million dollars from his PAC.
And I think what this indicates is heading into the midterms that seats that Republicans thought were a sure bet for them are no longer secure.
And this means it's time to get to work and we're ready to take back the House and take back every seat we can.
I think under the current maps, Democrats are leading in the polling on every single issue because the Republicans passed their big ugly bill, which cuts health care, it cuts food assistance, it cuts educational assistance, it gives tax breaks and giveaways to billionaires.
The White House hasn't even provided a consistent story at this point.
You know, every day, every hour, they seem to be changing their story.
I think what is obvious at this point is the chain of command was the president and the Secretary of Defense, and that second strike violated at least the military code and likely international law, as well as potentially domestic law, and potentially being murder.
And so there are now two bipartisan investigations in both the House and the Senate to look into what was known.
You know, I saw a Secretary of Defense claim during the cabinet meeting yesterday that he didn't witness it.
I don't care if he witnessed it or not.
If he gave an order to kill civilians or combatants who were in the water who were unarmed, that is a violation of the law and he will be ultimately held accountable.
Well, I don't know what they're referencing, but certainly, first of all, the administration has not even come to Capitol Hill to seek a declaration of war.
They are claiming that they are waging a war on drug cartels in Venezuela without any definition of what that means.
There are classified documents that they provided to the Hill, and as far as we can tell, they are trying to stretch the law to justify basically doing extrajudicial killings off the coast of Venezuela.
And what is it in service of?
It appears to be in service of regime change, not in service of actually seeking a declaration of war.
We are not at war with Venezuela or its people.
And so it's very clear that this administration does not think they have to follow the law, whether that's international law, domestic law, or military law.
And that is why members on both sides of the aisle are deeply disturbed, not only about this killing in September, but the overall scope of what the administration is trying to do in Venezuela.
And it's clear violations of the Constitution and violations of the law.
Congresswoman Melanie Stansbury is in the studio with us.
She's a Democrat of New Mexico.
If you'd like to join our conversation, you can start calling in now.
Republicans are on 202748-8000.
Democrats 202-748-88, sorry, Republicans 8,001, Democrats, 8,000, and Independents 202748-8002.
The administration has called these narco-terrorists that they are killing Americans.
There's been 100,000 Americans killed in overdoses.
Where do you stand on that?
And that, you know, the argument is made is that any bit of drugs that are being stopped and not being allowed to flow into the United States is a good thing.
Well, I guess my question, and I think the question on everyone's mind is, if the president is so concerned with narco-terrorists, why did he just commute the sentence of one of the most notorious narco-traffickers under American law with the commuting of the sentence of the Honduran president just in the last few days?
I mean, this man was known to have helped traffic literally tons of narco products into the United States.
Secondly, there's no clear evidence that these boats are engaged in narco-trafficking to the United States.
But most importantly, the U.S. Constitution is clear.
If you want to go to war with a foreign nation, you have to come to Congress.
It has to be debated before Congress, and Congress holds the authority to declare war, not the administration.
And I appreciate efforts to address drug trafficking.
I represent a border state in New Mexico, and fentanyl has had an absolutely devastating impact on our community.
But what we know is that the vast majority of fentanyl products are crossing the physical land border between Mexico.
And the way that we address that is by going after drug traffickers on the border, by preventing those products from making it to Mexico from China through negotiations with the Chinese government, not conducting extrajudicial killings of Venezuelan fishermen off the coast of South America.
Good morning, and thank you guys for having me on.
Thank you, Representative Stansbury, for being here today to answer questions.
Look, at least what I could say as a young Democrat, what we could see is a lot of Democrats are definitely annoyed at what this Trump administration is doing, and we are glad that there are still representatives like you that are still holding the Trump administration accountable, still reminding him that there's still a rule of law and still reminding him and the rest of this administration that there are laws in place for a reason.
There are checks and balances for a reason.
Now, thank you for reminding the Trump administration that they still have to go to Congress if they want to go to war with any foreign nation.
And one thing that I'm seeing is that a lot of the times that this occurs, the Trump administration has, they claim they have no idea that these strikes are even occurring.
That's ridiculous.
So in 2026, when the Democrats flipped the House, what can a Speaker Jeffries group of leaders do and what results can the American people expect on checks and balances of the Trump administration?
The checks and balances of this country have been absolutely gutted by the Trump administration.
And what I've been saying is this.
2026 is about reclaiming our democracy and 2028 is about restoring our country.
We have to understand that Donald Trump will still be in the White House unless something else happens.
We know he has failing health right now.
But we have a very good chance of taking back the majority in the House.
It's important to understand that the House is a majority institution, which means if you're not in the majority, you don't control the floor.
You don't control committees.
You don't control legislation.
So when we take back the House in 2026, Speaker Jeffries and the Democratic leadership will absolutely go after the historic corruption of the Trump administration and ensure that we are conducting oversight.
Now, our ability to ultimately hold the Trump administration accountable will depend on whether or not our colleagues across the aisle in the Senate are going to play ball and do their constitutional duty and hold individuals in the administration who are breaking the law accountable.
And I think we've seen multiple instances of potentially impeachable offenses, not only by the president, but by members of his cabinet over the last several weeks and months.
And so at the end of the day, it's not just about taking back the House and the Senate and the White House in 28.
It's important that our colleagues across the aisle who were duly elected by the American people to provide a check and balance on this administration finally step up and hold the Trump administration accountable.
It's not just on us.
This is their job.
This is what the founding fathers imagined when they set up our Constitution.
And that is the purpose of having a People's House is to have a check on unchecked administrative power.
I couldn't hear every detail of it, but let me just say that under the current polling and data that we see across the country, Democrats will take back the House.
And that is why the president and the Republican establishment have been trying to cheat, why they've been trying to redistrict in multiple states is because they are trying to change the map so that they're more favorable to them.
In terms of the outcome in Tennessee, I'll just reiterate what I said, which is that that race should not have even been close.
There was a point last night as data was coming in, especially from the Nashville area, where the Democratic candidate was actually ahead.
I mean, that's when you think about this is a district that Trump won by 22 points.
There shouldn't have ever been a moment like that.
So that really indicates the discomfort and distrust that the American people have with the current administration.
And I'll just say this, if you look at the polling, this is the least popular president in American history at this point in his tenure in American history.
And people are suffering out there right now.
The economy is bad.
People can't afford housing, utilities, groceries.
Well, I'm not sure if we're going to hear the rest of the question.
Listen, I don't take delight in anyone being sick or poor health.
I'm simply pointing out that the president of the United States, number one, did not attend a NATO meeting yesterday.
He has his son-in-law and personal advisor meeting with a foreign dictator in Russia, and he couldn't even keep his eyes open in a cabinet meeting yesterday.
The president is unwell.
He is not fit to be leading the United States right now.
And those, to me, are objective facts.
And I think the American people's discomfort with this presidency are an indication and a symptom of what's going on.
And that's a real shortage in these times right now for this current administration about telling the truth.
But the point I wanted to make is about the interdiction by missile firepower from fighter aircraft on the smokes in Venezuela.
It's ridiculous.
Back in the days when I was a youngster, long, long ago in the 60s, the Vietnam War was a big item.
A lot of bad things done.
And one of the things they did about stopping boats that were carrying ammunition, weapons, food, drugs for the adversary was they had these boats called swift boats.
They were 50-foot aluminum boats, gunned up heavy.
And they rode around in the canals and the river and the Mekong, and they stopped boats.
Why does not the current administration use interdiction instead of putting boats up against these guys?
So Richard, we're actually having trouble making out what you're saying because your line is not that good.
But you're saying why not interdict with the Coast Guard these boats as opposed to military action?
unidentified
Well, I'm going to step out here and hope my phone works a little better because sometimes my interception or your interception is better than the House.
I think that it is perfectly appropriate to come to Congress to make a case for why you would like to try some sort of more aggressive interdiction activities.
But it is illegal for the White House to proceed and actually try to declare war on a country without Congress and to engage in extrajudicial killings.
That's illegal.
It's fine to have a more aggressive policy approach.
You've got to make a case to Congress.
Congress has to approve it.
The People's House has to say, okay, we're going to move forward.
Brian in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, Independent Line.
Good morning, Brian.
unidentified
Good morning, and great to talk to C-SPAN.
I just want to ask the representative, I guess the delay is throwing me off a little bit, but she said, you know, she keeps saying fishing boats.
I'd like her comment on the semi-submersible that they sunk.
And also, I've looked at as many of these videos as I could see, and every one of these boats had either three or four outboard motors, which I haven't ever seen a fishing boat with three or four outboard motors.
I mean, whatever the nature of these boat craft, it is still illegal for the President of the United States and for the Secretary of Defense to bomb these boats, period.
Clearly, there is an effort online by political opponents to try to create a smokescreen for something that never happened.
The truth of the matter is that the President of the United States and his associates are all over the Epstein files, and he has been engaged in a sustained cover-up of the Epstein files for months.
And he has until the 19th to produce the documents that we have passed a law to require him to release those Department of Justice documents.
We know that he has had the FBI working on overtime to try to stop those documents from being released.
And we are engaged in a bipartisan investigation of the crimes conducted by Jeffrey Epstein and his associates.
We've just completed another set of subpoenas for the financial institutions to look into the financial crimes.
We are investigating the actual crimes that were committed by Epstein and his associates.
And I have never, I will never have any association with those folks.
So my understanding is that the Biden administration is the administration who did prosecute Maxwell, and that during the time that that prosecution was being undertaken, that because of the ongoing investigation, those files were not released.
But listen, I don't care who's in the files.
If you were engaged in criminal sex trafficking and financial crimes, I don't care if you have a D or an R after your name, whether you're political or not, you should be held accountable under the law.
And our effort in the Oversight Committee is to get justice for the victims.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris imported 20 million slaves, which resulted in the loss of 300,000 children.
Sorry about Epstein and a few girls that got paid, but 300,000 children he lost.
And the great-granddaughter of a slave owner, him imported all these slaves and got them to vote.
Now we got New York, with 60% of its population weren't born here, elected a communist jihadist mayor of the city of our greatest financial institution.
Look what happened in London.
It's not London anymore.
You can't be white and English in London anymore.
You can't say anything about the protected class of Muslims or else you go right to jail just for talking.
You can beat somebody, but it's the woman who complains about it that gets arrested.
I'm sorry, Ms. Stansbury, but the Democrats have created these problems.
This is Obama's State Department that ran the coup that put Zelensky in power.
And all things stem from crooked Zelensky in power.
I think the main thing I'll just say here is that I'm not here to provide a platform for hate, but I do want to correct a factual issue that was stated about the Epstein files.
There are thousands of potential victims who were raped and who were sexually assaulted by Jeffrey Epstein and his associates.
And we know that there was criminal misconduct with thousands of illegal wire transfers and potentially international sex trafficking as well.
We are conducting a criminal investigation into what happened.
Secondly, President Biden did not import slaves.
You can hold whatever point of view you would like in American democracy about the issue of immigration, but that is just factually false.
Congressional stock trading should never have been legal.
There are members on both sides of the aisle who are clearly, you know, trading in stocks while they're sitting, members of Congress.
And I think it's wrong.
I also think it's immoral.
I don't personally hold stocks.
I'm a regular person.
I was a working person, just like everybody else calling in before I was elected to Congress and grew up in a low-income family.
And I think that, you know, if you are a person who holds wealth or stocks, you should be required to either dispose of those or put them in a trust where you cannot access them while you're serving because it creates inherent conflicts of interest.
One thing I can tell you is that Representative Luna has announced in the last 24 hours that she is going to run a bipartisan discharge petition to get that bill to the floor.
And I will absolutely be signing the discharge petition and voting to pass that bill.
Yes, Mrs. Romelney Stansbury, you are doing a great job.
The last five Republican callers that called in were all megaheads.
Like Trump says, he likes his people stupid.
That's why he votes against education.
I just want to say in my lifetime, Democrat, 69 years old, Trump is the most corrupt president in the history of our country.
We need to take back the House, and we will then impeach him.
And right now, Trump's approval rating is at 30%.
Wake up, America.
This guy is a corruption machine.
Look at the crypto business.
Look at his family.
They're all corruption.
When 18 months from today, all these MEGA people who are calling in are going to realize they have no insurance, they have no hospitalization, they have no place to go.
Well, as you're probably aware, about a week ago, the White House announced that they were going to transmit a package of health care reforms, and then they pulled it back right before the Thanksgiving weekend because the Speaker of the House informed the President that House Republicans would not vote to extend ACA subsidies.
And so I think that has caused the White House to stall out.
And we know there's ongoing negotiations happening in the Senate over a package right now.
There's supposed to be a vote in the Senate pursuant to the deal that ended the shutdown.
But as far as we can tell, there's not a clear deal to reauthorize those subsidies, which means that literally millions of Americans are not going to be able to afford health insurance starting January 1st.
And that means millions of Americans are going to go without health care.
And so that is unacceptable.
We are going to continue to come to the table and negotiate.
But we need Republicans to do their jobs for the American people.
And I appreciate that the last caller provided some positive feedback for me.
But I want to just say the thing that's beautiful about the United States is we get to express our points of view.
The chair will alternate recognition between the parties with time equally allotted between the parties and each member other than the majority and minority leaders and the minority whip limited to five minutes.
unidentified
But in no event shall debate continue beyond 1150 a.m.