Mimi Geerges unpacks the Justice Department’s delayed Epstein files, Trump’s self-named battleship class ($2,000 tariff checks for Americans debated), and Venezuela tensions, while callers clash over aid cuts (1M+ child deaths in Congo) and economic policies. Fed Chair Powell defends 2% inflation targets despite 3% rates, citing tariffs as temporary, but critics question his timeline. GDP surged 4.3% in Q3, yet callers highlight gas prices, labor shortages (blamed on deportations), and AI-driven job gaps, revealing deep divides over economic recovery, political influence, and systemic failures. [Automatically generated summary]
Before we get to your calls, some breaking news for you.
This is NBC News that the Justice Department has released a third batch of Jeffrey Epstein files, including some that mention Trump.
It says there have been growing concerns from lawmakers and survivors that the Department had fallen short of releasing all of its records as required by law.
We are uploading all the Epstein files as we get them from the Justice Department on our website, c-span.org, if you would like to take a look at what's there and peruse them.
One more thing for you.
This is the front page of the Washington Post, Trump to name Navy battleships in his honor.
It says that President Trump yesterday, Monday, will oversee the development of a new class of Navy battleship named after himself.
The move was cast in part as an effort to give the nation's stagnant shipbuilding industry a shot in the arm, but also will upend the Navy's ship naming norms and thrust presidential politics firmly into the program from its genesis.
The announcement follows a flurry of recent actions by Trump to rebrand existing institutions to include his name, including the U.S. Institute of Peace and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
This is on the Washington Post.
And let's take a look at President Trump from yesterday in Mar-a-Lago making that announcement about the battleships and also about rising tensions with Venezuela.
Hopefully we never have to use them, but there will never be anything built like these.
Think of it.
Those battleships are incredible.
These have 100 times the power.
Think of that.
And they were big and they were powerful.
You know, I thought about taking some that are in dry dock and changing them.
And then when I said that, you know, if we did, would be about we could increase, if we doubled them, they'd be at like just a tiny fraction of what one of these was.
You just referenced the lower amount of illegal drugs that are coming by sea, and you just said that you're going to start that same program on land soon.
Are you just referring to Venezuela or are you referring to other microscopes?
And regarding Venezuela, there is a United Nations Security Council emergency meeting being convened today at 3 p.m., and C-SPAN will have live coverage of that meeting.
Venezuela has requested that the Council meet to discuss U.S. aggression toward the South American nation, citing President Trump's order of a blockade of Venezuelan ships and seizure of oil tankers.
Again, we have live coverage from New York City at 3 p.m. Eastern Time here on C-SPAN.
You can watch it on our app, C-SPANNOW, or online at c-span.org.
Now back to your calls on your personal finances going into the new year.
Byron in Wilson, North Carolina, Independent Line.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I want to let me ask you a quick question, please.
And I've got a comment after that.
How do y'all pick the subjects that y'all gonna have for today?
So let me just mention it since it's on the front page.
I get your point.
It says, in eastern Congo, where rape is widespread, the cancellation of U.S. AID funding for PepKits have left many victims vulnerable, according to nearly 50 interviews.
This is a picture from a clinic there in the Congo.
But I get your point, Byron.
unidentified
Did you want to weigh in once you button in on me because I got something real important to tell.
And it will help y'all out if you're listening to this.
Also, Gaza, you guys say nothing about that.
You know what it does, man?
It's people telling me that Trump is calling in here to the station, and you guys don't have a say-so in what y'all are showing to people.
And I think you need to cover these things.
You know, you could go to foreign channels, foreign news stations, Adazera, BBC, and I get more news than the news here in America.
Steve, in Indiana, Independent Outline, we're talking about your personal finances going into the new year.
unidentified
Yeah, yeah, Trump's the devil.
I'm looking optimistic.
I retired from U.S. Steel Gary Works.
I was born and raised in Gary Works or in Gary.
Actually, I was raised in Gary Works.
I started here at 19.
They're putting a ton of money into that plant over the next 10 years, I believe it is.
And it's really going to help this area.
My wife is about ready to retire because she can, you know.
But I was calling, I wanted to talk to your previous guest because I sat there and listened to him talk about how it's, you know, the white folks is killing the black folks and blah, blah, blah.
Let me give you a perspective from the white side of Gary, Indiana.
I was born in 1959 in Gary.
My dad was born in Miller.
That's where I grew up, which was a town before Gary even existed.
Miller was heaven.
After Gordon Hatcher became president or became mayor, the place just the whole town went to hell.
Black gangs of teenagers would go and harass store owners and bust out their windows.
My colleagues and I remain squarely focused on achieving our dual mandate goals of maximum employment and stable prices for the benefit of the American people.
Although important federal government data for the past couple of months have yet to be released, available public and private sector data suggests that the outlook for employment and inflation has not changed as much since our meeting in October.
Conditions in the labor market appear to be gradually cooling, and inflation remains somewhat elevated.
In support of our goals, in light of the balance of risks to employment and inflation, today the Federal Open Market Committee decided to lower our policy interest rate by a quarter percentage point.
As a separate matter, we also decided to initiate purchases of shorter-term treasury securities solely for the purpose of maintaining an ample supply of reserves over time, thus supporting effective control of our policy rate.
And Cordell in Columbia, Pennsylvania, Independent Line, you're on the air.
unidentified
Yes, hi, Mimi.
I can't really see what's going on on the screen, so I kind of had to just go off memory.
But anyway, to make a long story short, I feel optimist about my future financially just because I've been working on a small business for a while, over 20 years now.
Like my business plan was finished in 06, way back when there was like a lot of venture type of education that the state was putting out for people that was on unemployment.
You know, I flipped the card looking for the PAT number to call in my hours, and in actuality, the state was doing entrepreneurial training.
That was in 06.
You know, we're in 2026, and I've been weathering the storm, Mimi, for about 20 years now, you know.
So I say I'm looking, you know, forward to my financial future just because, you know, I've been on the battlefield of financing for the past 20 years.
So, you know, like a soldier on the battlefield that's been fighting a war for 20 years, you kind of get a little good at how to maneuver around through the potholes and landmines and stuff like that.
I'm going to be 80, and my perspective on the topic of optimistic finance future is the horror of what's done to seniors in losing their homes because I'll be getting $2,000, but that's the only thing I have.
And unfortunately, I thought it was wrong to take government money when you're in your working years.
So I never took a benefit of any kind from any source other than what I could make, starting out at $6.50 and ending up at $12.
And being a veteran's family members, the people from World War II, since I'm the youngest and the last one, there was a fires, so there's no paperwork available to help the spouse or daughter or anybody from veterans,
even the one that was my husband, Purple Heart.
And my problem is that you cannot get a reverse mortgage.
So they take away your house with the taxes and all that you're talking about about affordability and how you could pay for everything, the utilities and so forth.
Then there's nothing left.
So then the bank doesn't give you a reverse mortgage.
And here's where the government is one of the worst.
And this is supposed to be blue and they care about sanctuary.
They care about the poor.
And of course, of course, the United States, we love our senior citizens.
But you know what they're going to do?
They're taking the house is taken away and then they evict you.
And then the government puts you in a shelter, which I could never endure.
It's not just healthy seniors who are completely ambulatory and self-caring, but all people of all types of problems with the people.
Are you in danger of losing your house?
Or they put you in a nursing home and they place your Social Security and they tell you what to eat, when to get up and so forth, which another self-care person with all their marbles couldn't endure.
Hi, I just want to say my future financial future, and I hope that everyone understands we are where we are, but our financial future depends on what we can leverage where we are.
And right now, investing in the markets, and everybody says, oh, I don't have money in the markets.
I don't, you know, my mother-in-law used to say, Troy, if I had $5, I would try to save $2 in savings and investment.
She wasn't investing in the market, but she was just letting me know that sometimes we have to leverage what we have.
And if you need to work for somebody else, you need to also pay yourself.
And right now, it is easy to get in the markets, even invest in small accounts, small mutual funds that grows over time outside of your own 401k.
And for everyone, because we do have a president who doesn't understand everything, but what he does understand is he's increasing the markets and he's making things better in that regard.
I'm not talking about anything else.
I'm just talking about right now is the time to invest and small, make small increments.
You can get on any platform, Robin Hood, all these investor platforms that we didn't have advantage of years ago.
You can get on there and make your own investments.
And more from the Federal Reserve Chair, Jerome Powell, speaking about inflation and tariffs.
unidentified
Just to follow up on that, I mean, this is now the third time that you've cut this year and inflation is around 3%.
So is the message that you're sort of trying to send with that that you're okay with where inflation is for now, as long as people understand that at some point you still want to get back to 2% because inflation is relatively stable where it is?
Everyone should understand, and the surveys show that they do, that we're committed to 2% inflation, and we will deliver 2% inflation.
But it's a complicated, unusual, difficult situation where the labor market is also under pressure, where job creation may actually be negative.
Now, supply of workers has also gone way down, so the unemployment rate hasn't moved that much.
But, you know, it's a labor market that seems to have significant downside risks.
People care a lot about that.
That's their jobs.
That's their ability, if they get laid off or if they're entering the labor force, to find work.
So that's really important to people.
The story with inflation, and we're well aware that this is a story at this point, is that if you get away from tariffs, inflation is in the low twos, right?
So it's really tariffs that's causing most of the inflation overshoot.
And we do think of those as likely to, in the current situation, as likely to be a one-time, you know, one-time price increase.
Our job is to make sure that it is, and we will do that job.
But right now, you've got this difficult balance, and there are risks to both sides.
There's no risk-free path.
If it was just inflation and the labor market was just really strong, and then rates would be higher, as they were for more than a year.
We didn't have to worry about inflation.
Sorry, about the labor market, because the labor market, unemployment was very low.
If you remember when inflation was very high, there was a labor shortage.
So we could focus entirely on inflation.
Now, it's different.
We actually have risks to both.
And I think we're doing the best we can for people.
They also care about their jobs.
They do care about affordability.
And the best thing we can do there is both to support economic activity, but also make sure that when tariff inflation goes down and disappears, inflation lands around 2%.
The GDP numbers have just been released this morning.
This is CNN.
The U.S. economy was much stronger than expected in the third quarter.
It says an initial reading of third quarter gross domestic product, that's GDP, showed the U.S. economy expanded at an inflation-adjusted annualized rate of 4.3%, a far faster pace than the 3.8% recorded in the second quarter.
According to the Commerce Department data, that was released today.
That's the fastest growth rate in two years.
John in California, Republican line.
Good morning, John.
unidentified
Good morning.
How are you?
Merry Christmas.
Things are pretty good for me, I think.
And I feel for that lady that was talking about being put in a home and all that.
And it's really sad.
And our seniors, one of the things we've deluded ourselves into thinking, well, we have Social Security.
Well, I get Social Security, but if I had to live on that alone, it wouldn't cover six months of my living expenses and like that.
And the message there is we have to plan.
We have to plan in our years that we're productive and have full-time jobs and like that, that we're not always going to be able to do that.
And there's a lot of things that I've heard this morning that have really, really struck me.
We talk about inflation.
Well, my gasoline is $1 a gallon cheaper than it was when Joe Biden was president.
The first thing he did when he was sworn in is he stopped the pipeline.
He made war on the petroleum companies in this country.
My gasoline went from a little under $4 to almost, and in some cases, over $5, seemed like overnight.
And so inflation was worse under Joe Biden, and it was a result of too much spending.
You know, we're going to be all things to all people.
A lot of the problems that we have, we look to the government to solve.
We've got to look to ourselves.
And that sounds cruel.
Well, you've got to work harder.
You got to do this.
No, you've got to plan more.
And maybe I was shocked when you said the median cost of a home was $400,000.
Geez, I don't think today I could afford a $400,000 house.
So there are problems, but you can't always look to the government to solve them.
You've got to take things on yourselves.
Families got to come together.
You know, the younger people got to take care of their older parents and like that.
And that's the way it used to be.
But the government has stepped in so many places, and we're going to take care of it.
John, what we were talking, he was being sarcastic and saying we need to collect all the senior citizens and get them out of here in a sarcastic way, saying that they're a drain on our economy.
And he was not talking about undocumented immigrants.
Henry in Bethesda, Maryland, Democrat, go ahead, Henry.
unidentified
I just want to say that the biggest issue in the economy is the income disparity between the middle class and the upper or upper middle class and the poverty line people.
And The people that are hurting affordability are all in the lower tax brackets, and there's nothing being done by the government or the Congress to help them with their cost of higher education, housing, or health care.
And why do you think that is, Henry, that there's such a disparity?
Do you think it's a bigger disparity now than it has been in the past between the corporate well?
unidentified
I think the disparity has expanded, and I think it's partially due to the fact that small businesses are being reduced down, and we're getting more and more corporate people, and corporate jobs are not paying people in middle management and down as much as they are in middle management and up.
And so there are a lot of people who are in a higher tax bracket who are enjoying all the luxuries and the lower class is seeing the communication of that thing and wanting it, but they can't afford it and are getting into credit card debt.
They can't afford housing or they're buying a house and putting themselves in a situation where they can't afford it.
They need two incomes, maybe two jobs to get to the same bracket.
I mean, living under $100,000 a year with a family of four is almost impossible at this point, where years ago you could have one spouse working and buy a house.
And we are taking your calls for another 25 minutes until the end of the program on your personal finances and how you're feeling going into the new year, your level of optimism, your level of pessimism.
You can give us a call and share your thoughts on that.
Here's Rick in St. Petersburg, Florida, Republican Line.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning, Mimi.
First of all, I wanted to tell you you're my 14-month-old grandson's favorite commentator.
Anyway, we just helped my son get coverage through the exchange.
He's got a job that doesn't have coverage and doesn't pay him enough to buy it himself.
So we just sat down and did a conference call with the people at the exchange and paid his full year premium yesterday, and it was exactly the same as it was last year.
So I'm pretty optimistic in general.
I mean, we're doing okay, but we planned properly and worked hard our whole lives, and we're retired now and doing great.
So I'm pretty optimistic.
And the health care rates didn't, at least for us, it didn't double.
He was on this program, Washington Journal, a few days ago, and he's talking about the concept of affordability.
unidentified
He's wrong.
It's that simple.
When he took over, inflation was about 3%.
And probably when we get some better numbers collected for the month of December and January, it's going to be about the same.
So there's been no progress on inflation during his administration.
Now, he's done a number of things which contribute to inflation.
One of them is create shortages of lower skilled workers by deporting people who didn't do anything wrong to anybody.
You might not be aware of this, but the economy grew over the Trump won Biden years 2.5% a year, which is really, really quite impressive.
And we were adding about 175,000 jobs a month.
Indigenous population growth and the legal immigration regime we had in place during the Biden years can only give us 90,000 workers a month, additional.
The rest were basically illegal aliens or undocumented workers.
Use which language you want.
But the economy needs more immigrants to function and his extreme policies.
I certainly, you know, deport people who have committed crimes and seal the border and then let's have measured immigration where we let people come here who fill needs and we can do quite well.
But these extreme policies make it very difficult to run businesses, to build homes and so forth and push up prices.
Let's talk to David next in Deerfield Beach, Florida.
Democrat, good morning, David.
unidentified
Good morning.
As far as my personal financial outlook, I honestly believe as a 27-year-old, it's pretty good.
I have a lot more years in life to go, but our economy is running pretty well, though I don't necessarily agree with some of the political aspect of how things change.
Despite what we're hearing from the administration, we are not seeing a reduction in inflation.
Granted, we have seen some reductions in price, but I don't think the administration is really addressing the day-to-day cost issues that are being confronted by the American people.
But instead of giving Americans a plan on how we'll lower their costs, Donald Trump played the blame game.
That's so typical of him.
Instead of solving a problem, which is what a good president is supposed to do, he just points the fingers at other people.
And that doesn't do a bit of good to remove, to get the American people back on the right track.
It's never a good sign when the president begins a speech by saying, I inherited a mess.
Because that's just another way of telling people, I don't want to be responsible for any of this.
Again, President Trump's speech showed he lives in a bubble, a billionaire bubble, completely disconnected from reality that everyday Americans are seeing and feeling.
Senator Chuck Schumer, and this is Barbara in North Carolina, Republican.
Good morning, Barbara.
unidentified
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I am optimistic about the economy, and the main point I would make is that President Trump's emphasis on private sector is the most important concentration in order to increase competition in the marketplace.
The marketplace does determine pricing, and increased competition in the private sector now will determine lower prices.
And the fact that he has decreased federal government government employees is a very important thing for us.
We don't need as many administrators of social programs as we've had in the past.
We need vitality within the private sector.
And I, being born in 1950, experienced that vitality with my parents and other generations.
And being in business for 60-some years, I understand that as a business owner, in order to even hold your position, you must compete, even if that means losing money.
And with more grocery stores and with more competitors in all sectors, this is the natural occurrence in our private markets.
We can hearken back to many, many of the great thinkers in classic literature who have outlined the basics in market markets.
And this is what we need more than anything else: increased competition and 10 grocery stores on every corner and 10 parts houses and in every sector.
And we will see vitality return to this country again.
Here's the line for Democrats in Washington, D.C. Nikisha, you're on the air.
unidentified
Hi, yes, me.
Yes, I'm pessimistic because I, in 2026, I will have three college students, three African-American boys, which I can't bring back to the city of Washington, D.C., because black men die in Washington, D.C. I've been laid off for the last eight months as a federal government employee.
So I am definitely pessimistic because with three college students with the high cost of college, you either eat or you send your children to college.
And as a single mother, I'm pessimistic to this economy.
Yes, I definitely been looking everywhere, but unfortunately, I'm in hospitality and the labor market.
This is a slow season.
So unfortunately, they haven't been hiring in the hospitality industry.
I did try to pivot to go to, you know, to go to other fields, but unfortunately, right now, there's no funding.
Either A, I get funding for my kids to go to college or I get funding for my education.
And when you're living in Washington, D.C., in Southeast D.C., unfortunately, there's no options but to either A, pay your bills or keep your children in college.
For four years, everybody in the media, including yourself, tried to make everybody understand that all the commodity prices were not Joe Biden's fault.
You have beef prices.
Americans eat 100 million tons and only produce 45.
There's just a problem with the beef prices.
There were sugar cane problems because of floods and drought.
Cocoa beans for candy, coffee, everything, all with weather conditions had nothing to do with anything that anything that's been going on with anybody.
And I think it's kind of disingenuous that you try to make it sound like it's all Trump's fault or anybody else's fault.
We will be back tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. Eastern.
Have a great day.
unidentified
Coming up, an all-day marathon featuring President Trump's meetings with foreign leaders during the first year of his second term.
We begin with one of four meetings in 2025 with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
That's followed by President Trump hosting Jordan's King Abdullah II in the Oval Office.
After that, we'll show you the president speaking to reporters alongside Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Later, President Trump's remarks when he welcomed French President Emmanuel Macron to the White House.
All that and more coming up here on C-SPAN as part of our year-end review marathon.
All this week, watch Washington Journal's Holiday Authors Week series, featuring live conversations with a new author each day.
Coming up Wednesday morning, author and free speech advocate Greg Lukianoff discusses his book, The War on Words, 10 Arguments Against Free Speech and Why They Fail.
Watch Authors Week live during Washington Journal, Wednesday morning beginning at 7 Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at c-span.org.