C-SPAN’s Washington Journal (12/26/2025) dissects holiday travel chaos—122.4M Americans on the move, FAA staffing crises, and $1B family-friendly airport upgrades—while critiquing Trump’s infrastructure claims ($32T deficit fears) and Biden-era funding gaps (9% of $1.5T bill spent). Chris Gibson contrasts Founders’ "common sense realism" with modern polarization, citing slavery’s unresolved compromise and eroding civic education. Callers clash over immigration, gerrymandering, and extremism, linking Trump’s rhetoric to violence like Vance Bolter’s murders tied to Christian nationalist groups. The debate underscores how ideological fractures and systemic neglect undermine both governance and public trust in democratic institutions. [Automatically generated summary]
Next on Washington Journal, we'll continue our Holiday Authors Week series, featuring live conversations with a new author each day.
Coming up after your calls and comments, we'll talk with former Republican New York Representative Chris Gibson about his book, The Spirit of Philadelphia, and how American founding principles can revitalize bipartisanship and civic engagement.
With the Christmas holiday over, many Americans will spend this weekend headed back home after visiting family and friends.
By air, road, or rail, AAA anticipates record holiday travel this year, giving millions of people an up-close and personal experience with our nation's travel infrastructure, our highways, bridges, airports, and more.
That's our topic to start off this morning.
What's your confidence in America's travel infrastructure?
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Now, let's dig into some of those AAA numbers that I just discussed.
Here it is on their website that year-end holiday travel is expected to set a new record with 122.4 million Americans projected to leave town over Christmas and New Year's Day.
Now, that 122 million travelers is including people who are going to be traveling at least 50 miles for the holidays, and the window of time that the AAA is looking at is between about December 20th and January 1st.
Over 8 million will take domestic flights, while 110 million will be traveling by car.
And then, if you look at other types of travel, just 4% will be doing another mode of transportation.
But here's a chart looking at exactly how those travelers stack up with 89.4% traveling by car, 6.6% traveling by air, and another 4% traveling by other modes such as trains and cruises and things like that.
Now, then, there has been quite a bit of controversy around air travel in particular this year, especially after that terrible accident that happened here in Washington, D.C. back in January.
Nevertheless, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has assured Americans that travel is safe around the holidays this year.
Here's a story about it in Fox Business.
Transportation Secretary assures Christmas travel safety despite air traffic control shortages.
The Transportation Secretary's assurances come as over 122 million Americans prepared for holiday travel.
This was a story from back on December the 18th.
Now, the Transportation Secretary was speaking to Fox Business when he made these comments.
So in essence, we've increased the capacity of air traffic controllers through our training school by 20% year over year this year.
We are making up the deficit.
I think what you're going to see, Maria, is that as we bring this new technology on, and you mentioned Periton, we have a project manager that's going to build our new air traffic control system.
We realize that after 20 years of trying to upgrade the system, the FAA, they're great at safety.
They're not great at building things.
And so we're going to bring in an outside contractor to do the work for us, to help us manage this massive project.
So I feel really great on the implementation of air traffic control.
And if we implement this project over the next three years, I think our controllers that we do have are going to be more effective.
But I think we're going to come close to the number.
Also, we have great air traffic controllers who are about to retire.
We've asked them to stand the job.
Don't retire.
We'll give you a 20% upfront cash bonus to stay on the job.
So we're looking at every angle to keep more controllers in our towers to make sure we control the airspace.
And what happens is if you don't have enough controllers, you see the ones we do have, they work overtime.
They work six days a week and a lot of hours and a shift.
And again, if we don't have enough, and we saw this during the shutdown, when people didn't come in, we started to reduce the capacity of the airspace.
And you saw a lot of delays from that because safety comes first.
As Fox Business's Maria Bardaromo mentioned there, she was responding with her question to earlier statements from the FAA head.
And this is also referenced in that Fox Business story that Duffy's confident take comes just after the Federal Aviation Administrator's Chief Brian Bedford told lawmakers Tuesday that air traffic control towers are unlikely to ever reach maximum staffing if the agency continues operating as it does now, acknowledging persistent shortages during a House Aviation Committee, a House Aviation Subcommittee hearing.
Now, this is a testimony that he gave earlier this month related to that and aviation safety.
Here he is in an exchange with Democratic Representative Valerie Fouchi over that shortage of air traffic controllers.
And without opining one way or the other, I can tell you that the FAA will work better if government continues to be funded.
So if I could encourage a you didn't ask, you did ask my opinion, so I'll share it.
If you ask me, the default position for if you don't like the current budget should be the current budget just continues, right?
unidentified
And I agree with that, but specifically I'm asking whether you think the threats from Secretary Duffy or the president will impact the FAA's ability to recruit and have impact on the morale of air traffic controllers.
So as I said in my opening remarks, the FAA was shorthanded prior to the lapse in funding.
No one can argue that the lapse in funding was anything other than painful for those federal workers who were called to work without pay during what turned out to be the longest six-week shutdown in history.
I don't think anybody's happy about that.
Nobody wants to see it happen again.
But we do have an obligation to come to work.
That is part of the obligation we take as federal workers.
And it's illegal for our controllers to have a job action.
We saw two facilities at the very end of the lapse where we had ATZ0 because none of the controllers showed up for work.
So we do have to ask some tough questions about was that a job action?
If it was, it's just not, that's not tolerable.
So I think there is an accountability, but overall, yes, culturally it's difficult to get the kind of engagement that we want when we can't pay people to come to work.
unidentified
Absolutely, but specifically about the threats to fire people if they are sick.
I mean, people get sick during a government shutdown, threatening to fire them and making people afraid, forcing them to potentially come to work when they're under the weather.
Again, we have regional phone lines for this topic today.
If you're in the Eastern or Central time zones, that number is 202-748-8000.
If you're in the Mountain or Pacific time zone, 202-748-8001.
You can also text us at 202-748-8003.
And we received a text from Adam in Maryland who says, Duffy hasn't made the roads safer yet, not expecting him to find a great contractor to fix air travel yet either.
So, Rob, I'll actually want to give you a bit more information because you're talking about it's important to pay the air traffic controllers even during a shutdown.
A House committee has actually recently moved forward with a piece of legislation that would do just that.
I'll read you a bit here from a story in Politico: the headline, House Committee OK's Air Traffic Controller Pay Bill.
The House Transportation Committee on Thursday, this was earlier this month, approved bipartisan legislation that would allow the Federal Aviation Administration to continue paying air traffic controllers during future government shutdowns.
The bipartisan bill, which leaders of the panel introduced in the wake of the air travel chaos during the recent 43-day appropriations lapse, was okayed by a voice vote.
Despite advancing out of committee, the bill faces an uphill battle in Congress.
Politico previously reported that some appropriators believe the concept would be unfair to the rest of the government or would remove a pain point, thus potentially prolonging shutdowns.
An earlier attempt at exempting controllers from spending stalemates fizzled out about five years ago.
Rob, what do you think?
unidentified
Do you think the Congress should move forward with that legislation?
You know, of course, you know, you've got to make our elected officials accountable to make decisions on behalf of the American people that move us forward.
They just canceled windmills off of the coast of New York for spite.
And it's just silly.
I mean, we've got to hold these people accountable.
I'm going to skip past all the niceties and all the frivolous stuff and just kind of put a statement out that maybe other callers and viewers might have some sympathy with.
I think the problem with the whole thing in our government really comes down to just age limits.
You know, there's other issues, but age limits would go a long way to just getting a little more progression going, maybe have a better transportation system, air traffic controllers.
I mean, you know, you don't need to stress a 75-year-old man.
I think government politicians, you know, again, 70 years old, mandatory retirement.
Just make a mandatory retirement across all government workers at 70 years old, you know, elected or appointed.
We have a comment from Facebook from Barbara Cummings, who says her confidence in the nation's travel infrastructure, it's not good.
Trump has withheld funding for projects that were passed under Biden.
TSA sharing personal data with ICE on every single person flying is frightening.
Andre says, compared to other countries, America is laughable.
And then Timbo in Mountain Home, Arkansas says, yeah, if you can get past the dodging the potholes, cracks in the engines on UPS planes, trains running into trucks stalled on a railroad tracks, and boats being blasted out of the water by drones, I guess the traveling infrastructure is okay.
And then Matthew Crawley says they have none.
Government is very inefficient, and politicians love making expanding the nanny state a priority instead of expanding the roads.
Let's hear now from Conrad in Florida.
Good morning, Conrad.
unidentified
Good morning.
I just want to make a suggestion since they saw that for controllers.
Monthly this march on over to the Air Force and use their controllers.
And they can send planes to Israel, Japan, Hong Kong with no problems.
So if you run short, use the military.
Most of these people making the decisions out of the airport don't even know how to fire a drone.
They can give up at a drop of a dime and send something to the moon, but they can't put nothing down in these airports.
unidentified
Use the military.
Half of these people that's running these positions in Congress and the airport controllers, they don't even know how to, listen, they ordinary people like me, half of them never flew a plane before, so use the Air Force.
That problem decided the day.
They're sitting there doing nothing.
They're going all over the country to send another country, you know, defend our airports.
Many people are traveling by road this holiday season, and President Trump actually was touting the lower energy and gas prices during his economic address last week.
For years, the radical left Democrats exploited the green energy scam as an excuse to funnel many billions of dollars into their own massive slush funds as their energy restrictions drastically drove up prices and they drove them up at record levels.
Electricity costs surged 30 to 100 percent under Biden, and the typical family lost $5,000 to $10,000 in higher energy costs.
Think of that $5,000 to $10,000 you lost on day one.
I declared a national energy emergency.
Gasoline is now under $2.50 a gallon in much of the country.
In some states, it, by the way, just hit $1.99 a gallon.
And within the next 12 months, we will have opened 1,600 new electrical generating plants, a record, and it's a record that won't be beaten by practically, I would say, by anybody, or certainly not very soon.
There's actually an opinion piece in the Washington Post today talking about the infrastructure issues in the United States.
And here it is: America is numb to this infrastructure problems.
And this one is talking about traffic on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.
That Maryland needs to replace the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, as everyone who has driven on it knows.
Yet construction to replace the structure is only scheduled to begin in 2032.
The most shocking aspect of this story is that locals aren't more shocked.
Tens of thousands of drivers cross the Bay Bridge every day.
It's a vital link to the Eastern Shore.
The bridge has no shoulders, no new lanes have been added in more than half a century, while the populations of the counties it connects have grown by 82 percent and 175 percent.
Authorities began to study how to replace that bridge in 2016.
The board of the Maryland Transportation Authority approved a proposal to build a new bridge last Thursday.
This is yet another important infrastructure project Americans needed yesterday that will take decades to complete and only in the unlikely event that it stays on schedule.
People have become numb to the absurdity of these timeframes and the language around them, but the consequences of this delay are too real.
While government officials spent the better part of a decade studying the project, the existing bridge grew older and more overburdened.
The proposal that has finally been approved is twice as expensive as previous estimates.
That nine-year process didn't even produce a complete design for the bridge, and the proposal requires federal approval, even though it is a state-owned, state-operated bridge completely within one state.
Massive environmental reports still need to be written, which will require expensive consultants.
Once again, this morning, we're talking about your confidence in the nation's travel infrastructure.
We have regional phone lines if you're in the eastern or central time zones.
202-748-8000, Mountain or Pacific time zones, 202-748-8001.
And again, our text message line is 202-748-8003.
Now, then, we have more from the House Transportation Committee Chair, Sam Graves, from back in November.
This is House Transportation Committee Chair Sam Graves at a Punch Bowl news event here in Washington from back in November.
This time, he's talking about changes he's looking at regarding the gas tax.
unidentified
The question we always have about the highway bill when the highway bill comes up is the gas tax and where does the gas tax go?
Do you have planned any changes on the gas tax?
And you mentioned EVs, so I should ask, how do you handle EVs in this?
Right now, we're going to probably have an EV registration fee, and we're going to do one for hybrids, too.
My last proposal was $250 for EVs and $100 for hybrids.
This will be the first new money in the trust fund in 30 years.
And we have to address that again.
If we don't, then we're not going to be able to pay for this infrastructure.
We're not going to be able to pay for our roads and bridges.
And if you're using those roads and bridges, you should be paying into that process.
That is the bottom line.
That's how it works.
The nice thing about my world in transportation is we have all these trust funds, and they're true trust funds.
The Highway Trust Fund, Aviation Trust Fund, Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund, the Inland Waterways Trust Fund.
The list goes on and on and on.
But if you're using that infrastructure, then you should be paying for it.
Too bad only 9% of the Biden administration's $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill went to our infrastructure.
The rest, $1.4 trillion, is still unaccounted for.
This is from someone in Oklahoma.
The Urban Institute actually did a study looking at the spending from the Biden-era infrastructure bill.
Here's a report based on this from Streets Blog USA.
The Urban Institute found an overall increase in capital investment in ground transportation, mostly on highways, and flat investment in public transit.
President Joe Biden promised that the Infrastructure and Investment Jobs Act of 2021 would represent the most significant investment in passenger rail in the past 50 years and in public transit ever.
But in a comprehensive review of 40 years of spending since the law went into effect, the Urban Institute has found that historic federal investment in shared modes was eclipsed by an increase in state and local spending on highway projects, as well as a decrease in transit funding at the community level.
On balance, total funding for transit across all levels of government actually flatlined, and rail projects increased a net decline in spending.
Let's hear from Tria in Maryland.
Good morning, Tria.
unidentified
Hi, good morning, everyone.
Thank you for taking my call.
My thing is this.
It's a shame on the president that he will talk about gasoline after firing all these people.
Like, you give us a little, like, you give us a little, little, little thing like gas, and it's supposed to take up for all the other just all the other destructions that you're bringing on families.
In Baltimore, for the transit, you're talking about the transit thing, right?
But my thing is, in Baltimore, there has been roads that have been bumpy, just potholes since my kids were young, and they're 20-something years old.
Like, just to put another spin on it, like, we really have to get to other roads other than the highway.
And then, how about you can't even see medium strips in Baltimore at night?
Like, someone needs to do something about that.
I'm not sure if this is a part of transit of our conversation, but I just need to really put that out there.
Hey, you just brought that up about the infrastructure, Doug.
And that's what I was going to say.
I thought that passed.
And President Biden was bragging how all the airports and roads and schools and maybe not the schools, but all these infrastructure things were going to happen around the country.
And everything was being brand new and up to date.
And it was all bull owning.
And that's what is frustrating me for a living.
Where did that money go?
And it's just bullony.
And the big, beautiful bill better do something too if they're going to spend a bunch of money on that.
But as far as our roads in Washington, where I live, they're actually pretty good.
unidentified
And our state has spent millions and millions of dollars on like redoing bridges and culverts and stuff over all the creeks and stuff due to the salmon and fish, you know.
So everything is actually pretty nice as far as around where I live.
But yeah, where's the infrastructure money, huh?
That just blows my mind.
It never happened.
Remember Obama did the same thing.
It was supposed to be all these shovel-ready jobs, and they did build a few highways and stuff here and there.
But that money was all blown too.
I think it goes into people's pockets or something.
But anyway, I've seen you brought that up just before you got to me.
So I'll share a bit more of that Urban Institute report that looked at how the spending in infrastructure has changed since the Biden administration era transportation law.
This goes back a little bit into the history that the federal government's share of overall infrastructure spending had generally declined before the Infrastructure and Investment and Jobs Act, especially on highway investment, as state and local governments has taken on larger roles.
In 2020, the share of the federal budget spent on highways and transit was substantially lower than it was in the late 1970s.
This shift can be partially attributed to an increase in federal expenditures on health care, though infrastructure spending as a share of the economy of the total economy has also declined.
In 1970, governmental entities spent 1.93% of the gross domestic product on transportation infrastructure.
In 2020, that share was just 1.65%.
Let's hear from Roy in California.
Good morning, Roy.
unidentified
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I'd just like to say to the gentleman who called from Washington just before me that the infrastructure bill that Biden passed, Trump came along and then did executive orders canceling major portions of that.
In addition, every Republican administration since Reagan has saw fit to cut taxes, what people need to understand is that the revenue in taxes is what's used to do infrastructure.
In Trump's first administration, he bragged for, oh, next week it's going to be infrastructure week.
It never happened, and it's never going to happen.
He's too busy building golf courses somewhere else for himself, folks.
And I live in California.
My roads are fine because we pay a lot of taxes.
And people hear a lot of people complain.
They're moving out because they don't want to pay taxes.
But guess what?
I see where my taxes are going.
My roads look fine.
They're building homes and developing communities and such, so building schools.
So I don't have a problem paying taxes at all.
You know, so all you people that think government should operate as a business because you got this businessman, it's not, it's not a for-profit business, folks.
The money that comes into the government is supposed to go to fix roads and schools and do all the infrastructure projects.
And this administration is not about that.
They're about saving money for the rich and all you people that think that your whiteness is going to make you rich.
The Department of Transportation, as well as the Department of Health and Human Services, have recently launched a $1 billion joint travel campaign for families.
Here's coverage of this in NewsNation: saying that the U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced $1 billion in funding to put more family-friendly resources in airports.
The funding was announced as an initiative with the Department of Health and Human Services called Make Travel Family Friendly Again.
Duffy said during a news conference Monday, the airports can request what expansions they want.
Here is the HHS Secretary Kennedy at DC's National Airport earlier this month, pushing in particular for healthier food options at airports.
I want to thank you for your commitment to making our airports healthier.
We both work for a boss who wants to make America president in at least modern history.
Sean has nine kids.
I have seven kids.
We both know what it's like to travel in the airport.
There's 3 million Americans a day who go through airports.
And it's not in the past.
It has not been a healthy experience for them.
I fly typically over the past 30 years, probably average 250 days a year in airports.
And I can tell you that this is where healthy diets go to die.
The food that's available in the airport, a lot of it tastes very good, but it's not very good for you.
It's deep-fried food, it's sugar bombs, it's ultra-processed foods, and all of them are going to leave you sicker than before you ate them.
And one of the things that Secretary Duffy is encouraging these airports to do is to open up new options like the one you see behind you, Farmer's Fridge, which actually provides really healthy food for travel so that you arrive feeling invigorated and robust and healthier.
Let's go to a couple comments we've received via text and social media.
This first one from Frank in Aberdeen, Maryland, who says, My confidence in U.S. infrastructure is becoming more dismal with each passing decade.
The problem is Congress and the states all love to build new highways, bridges, and tunnels, but funding their proper care and maintenance once built, not so much.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Then when something tragic happens, governments briefly will pay attention before lapsing into not adequately funding upkeep in order to make more room for tax cuts.
We heard from Charlotte, who says, no confidence.
This is where we need to have the rich pay their fair share into taxes so we can be safe on infrastructure projects.
And Frank and Bend Oregon says, I wouldn't fly, take a ship, or train, just too many potential hazards.
I would drive, the roads seem to be doing okay, but I would watch weather and roads reports first.
Well, thank you to everybody who shared their opinions on this for our segment starting out the show.
We're going to take a break, and when we come back, we're going to go to Open Forum.
Our phone lines for Republicans, 202-748-8001.
For Democrats, 202-748-8000.
And for Independents, 202-748-8002.
You can start calling in now.
We'll be right back.
unidentified
Today, on a special edition of Ceasefire, host Dasha Burns features key moments from Ceasefire's inaugural season, highlighting moments of friendship and humor, respectful disagreement, Tim's someone who, even when he disagrees, vehemently disagrees, Tim makes friends across the aisle with everyone.
The thing that I appreciate about Rob is while we differed, particularly after he led the charge for the Democrats to defeat the Republican majority in 2006, I always felt over it.
We ought to just commit ourselves to love and justice, not hatred and revenge.
unidentified
One of the wonderful things that I've been able to experience with my very dear brother, Robert George, is that I love the brother when he's right.
I love him when he's wrong.
I love him when he's wrestling in his quest for truth.
Watch our special bipartisan moments from this season of Ceasefire today at 7 p.m. Eastern only on C-SPAN.
American History TV, Saturdays on C-SPAN 2, exploring the people and events that tell the American story.
This weekend, as the nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, join American History TV for our series, America 250, and discover the ideas and defining moments of the American story.
This week at 11 a.m. Eastern, a ceremony in Boston marking the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, held by the National Park Service and other groups.
And then at 2 p.m. Eastern, North Carolina high school teacher Valencia Abbott receives the 2025 History Teacher of the Year Award from the Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History.
Historian Stacey Schiff headlines the award ceremony.
And at 5 p.m. Eastern, prepare to ring in the new year with addresses from Presidents Ronald Reagan in 1983 and Bill Clinton in 2000.
Exploring the American story, watch American History TV.
Saturdays on C-SPAN 2.
And find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org slash history.
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Some other news that we are watching this morning includes the President's announcement of the strikes on Nigeria last night.
Here is his statement on Truth Social.
Tonight, at my direction as Commander-in-Chief, the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS terrorist scum in northwest Nigeria who have been targeting and viciously killing primarily innocent Christians at levels not seen for many years and even centuries.
I have previously warned these terrorists that if they did not stop the slaughtering of Christians, there would be hell to pay, and tonight there was.
The Department of War executed numerous perfect strikes as only the United States is capable of doing.
Under my leadership, our country will not allow radical Islamic terrorism to prosper.
May God bless our military and Merry Christmas to all, including the dead terrorists, of which there will be many more if their slaughter of Christians continues.
Now to your thoughts in open forum.
We'll start with Earl in Canton, Georgia on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Earl.
unidentified
Oh, yeah, I called in on the transportation, but I'd like to continue with that.
But in Georgia, they have an average of three roadway deaths per year since 2023.
I don't know what it is today, but in New York state, they have an average of one and a half per day, averaged per year.
But the population in New York is twice what the population is in Georgia.
The rail has been in Georgia for half of a century.
MARTA in Atlanta.
They've had 30 years ago, MARTA, the rail, not MARTA, the rail could have been 50 to 100 miles in every direction out of Atlanta.
And for some reason, they just keep building highway after highway.
And for anybody that's been through Atlanta, I'll not even drive down there.
It's too much.
It's over.
You can't drive through Atlanta now, even during the day, any time of day, without, you know, it taking you an hour and a half to get there from Canton, which is before it was 30 minutes.
But I just, I don't understand why the legislature we have has been run by the Republicans for nearly 50 years now.
And Jimmy Carter actually brought MARTA to Atlanta, which is a fun system.
Next up is William in Tucson, Arizona on our line for independence.
Good morning, William.
unidentified
Good morning.
About the only thing I want to say is transportation related.
Here in Tucson, we had a person that was attacked and knifed probably to his death on one of our free buses.
Why anybody would enter into that kind of situation?
You know, I take my car.
If I were going to drive California or drive to Texas, I'd take my own car, you know, and you could stay in that car and that kind of car that kind of protects you.
But flying on the plane or on a bus or on a train, it's just crazy out there.
You know, there's so many problems with people just killing people.
Doris is in Atlanta, Georgia on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Doris.
unidentified
Good morning.
I lived in Nigeria for a number of years, and my children, their father, my husband, was Nigerian.
So, you know, I do wonder what the real reason for a person who does not go to church, who doesn't show any type of real Christian belief, why that person feels that it's necessary to take the United States, the United States military, into a country and attack the people in that country.
I do believe Republicans and Democrats, and whether you're an independent or not, you have to look further and wonder why this man is going into Nigeria and some of the other countries, but especially into an African country when he doesn't really care for either brown or black people.
You see how he treats brown people in this country, and these were brown people who supported him.
So there is some additional context about those strikes reported here in the Washington Post and just some background on Nigeria in general.
Nigeria is a diverse, multi-ethnic country of 230 million people, roughly split between the mostly Muslim North and the predominantly Christian South.
While violence has sometimes targeted Christians, it has also deeply affected Muslims, according to Nigerian and Western analysts.
The Pentagon said Thursday that the Nigerian government approved of the strikes and worked with the United States to carry them out.
On Friday morning, Nigerian Foreign Affairs Minister Youssef Tugar told Nigerian broadcaster Channels Television that his country provided intelligence to the U.S. for the strikes and that he had spoken with Secretary of State Marco Rubio twice in the lead-up, including in one call that lasted 19 minutes.
Referring to his discussion with Rubio, he said it was agreed that statements by the two governments would show clearly that it is a strike against terrorism and that it is not to do with religion as it is to do with protecting Nigerians and innocent lives.
So let's now hear from Deborah in North Carolina on our line for Republicans.
I called because I've been listening to these Democrats.
And your last one, she said something about racism, but she called Trump a white president.
If that's not racism, I don't know what is.
But anyway, that's not the point.
The point is, if you want to know what's going on in the world, if you want to know everything that's coming and everything that has been, try reading your Bible.
Everything is in that Bible.
Everything.
So if you want to know what's really going on, read the Bible.
It will show you what's coming, what has been, and what will be.
That's all you need to know.
And it's all the truth.
So if you've got a problem with something, look in the Bible.
It's there.
Everything that's happening in the world today has been and will be is right there in the Bible.
Alan is in Brooklyn, New York on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Alan.
unidentified
Good morning.
Thank you very much.
I've got a few points that I have been thinking about a lot the last year, but they all still seem very relevant.
First of all, back about 30 years ago when our friend Newt Gingrich did his contract with America, one of his points was, let's run the government more the way we run business and use business standards.
Okay.
Under business standards, there is such a thing as consumer fraud litigation for dishonest advertising.
And Trump himself tried to use it after the election when there was some pollster who supposedly didn't calculate her polls correctly and was trying to influence the outcome with her false statements.
And he dropped that suit because it had absolutely no merit.
But if that were applied to him, we would have an opportunity to bring our product back and return it because he had engaged in massive advertising fraud during the campaign about what he intended to do as president at this time and other standards that should be applied to him equally involving his oath of office.
It should never have been administered under ordinary contract law when someone has said things that are inconsistent with the text of the oath.
He said he planned to terminate the Constitution openly at campaign events before the election of 2024.
And yet, when he was approaching Inauguration Day, Biden did not make an issue of that with the court.
He should have applied the rule that when someone repudiates the terms of a contract before the time for his performance, the other side of the contract has a right to say, you have breached this contract by your earlier statements, and I am entitled to demand further assurances that you really do intend to carry out your terms.
Otherwise, I am released from my side of the contract.
In other words, he would not be allowed to take the oath at his inauguration unless he openly repudiated his statement that he plans to terminate the Constitution.
And I wish Biden had told the court I want a declaratory judgment whether or not President Trump must issue a public withdrawal of his statements that are inconsistent with the oath to the Constitution or else he can't take it.
And Biden did not take that advice because he's too moderate in his demeanor to do anything drastic.
And he gave Trump the benefit of the doubt, but he did not deserve it.
Next up is Jason in Benton, Arkansas, on our line for independence.
Good morning, Jason.
unidentified
Well, good morning, and happy new year to all of you at C-SPAN.
Thank you.
I'll tell you: one of the things that I grew up a Republican until this last term with Trump because he has turned me further away from my own party than I can even see straight.
I mean, don't get me wrong when I say this.
I was so for him giving the military members that 1776 bonus that he gave them.
But then I see a catch-22 with it because we're getting money with Doge and we're getting money with all this other stuff that we can give out like that.
Yet we still have the $32 plus trillion dollar deficit that we're not even touching.
And I can't see us.
You had a call a few callers ago and said, we're going to get into a war.
We're not going to be the victors.
And I see that happening so fast.
I see that man has done nothing but divide this country.
And I mean, I pray for him every day.
I pray for all of our leaders every day.
But I just, there's no gray area.
You can't, the only thing bipartisan seems like in this country is this network because you guys give the Democrats, the, you know, the independents and the Republicans a voice to speak out.
You do that, you're either with Trump or you're against him.
There's no gray area.
And that's just something I think that needs to change.
And we really need to start focusing.
If he's going to start focusing on the economy and stuff, we need to start focusing on this deficit that we have, too.
Next up is Mark in Oklahoma on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Mark.
unidentified
Yes.
Hey, the thing that I'm going to point out to people is we have gotten to the point where Trump name is trying to go on everything and he's trying to change names.
He's spending a lot of, they're spending money on doing stuff like that and putting his name on the Kennedy Center and stuff instead of this being, hey, look, we got shortfalls and Social Security and well privatize it, this, that, and Medicare and different things.
Instead of worrying about changing names and flopping name around and branding everything and stuff, put that money in Social Security, build it up.
We got the military looking good.
My dad was in Korea.
And let's put this money to where it can really work and show the rest of the world we take care of our citizens and put it in Social Security, put it into the Veterans Administration so they have the money to do what they need to do to live and say, hey, we take care of our citizens here.
So if you do come over and are getting a golden ticket or whatever, you are a citizen of the United States.
As long as you play by the rules, we're going to take care of you, not wish you wash your round and do everything.
And we're deployed here and a $75 million jet crashes into the ocean, left on the bottom of the ocean for the Chinese or somebody to go fetch out of the ocean, copycat it, put there so we got to build more and more expensive weapons and running around threatening to bomb countries and all this and spending all that money and putting all their ships out there in the water and stuff.
And Russia leader, oh, beefcake and all this calendars and stuff.
And then he says one week that, well, I want to take over the rest of the world.
So I want to add a little bit of news to that because this is reporting from Axios as well as elsewhere that Trump and Zelensky are planning to meet on Sunday to try to close out a peace plan for that ongoing conflict there in Ukraine.
This reporting saying President Trump is expected to host Ukrainian President Vlodymir Zelensky in Mar-a-Lago on Sunday to try and reach an agreement on the U.S. peace plan, Ukrainian officials say.
The meeting is a sign of significant progress in the talks.
Trump previously said that he'd only meet Zelensky if he felt a deal was close.
We are not losing a single day.
We have agreed on a meeting at the highest level with President Trump in the near future.
A lot can be decided before the new year.
Zelensky wrote on X on Friday morning after receiving a briefing from his top negotiator.
Ukrainian officials tell Axios that meeting will take place on Sunday.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Let's hear now from Nate in Franklin, Indiana, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Nate.
unidentified
Good morning.
Hey, my question is to my fellow Republicans as to what our party stands for.
And I just wanted to make six quick points.
Traditional family values, we have the gayest administration in history with one of the main cabinet members being openly gay, married to another man.
They had the president up to his ears in Epstein emails.
And this administration just approved an abortion pill a couple of months ago.
How about fiscal conservatism?
This administration is outspending Joe Biden.
We're up to $38 trillion in debt.
How about taxes?
How about penalizing Americans for what they buy with a King George import tax?
And how about our military?
We're dragging our great military through the political mud, putting them on our streets, making a posse out of them.
Wants to control what we say, wants to control what we hear and see.
And he walks on our Constitution, making lawyers great again.
How about this?
He rolls out the red carpet for all of our enemies and treats our allies like, you know, like Zelensky treats him like a, you know, a red-headed stepchild, no, no offense to redheads.
But when you look at all this, I have to ask the question: what does this party stand for?
Yeah, I mean, we've got all these officials leaving the Heritage Foundation and joining Mike Pence because this party no longer stands for what we've always stood for.
unidentified
Traditional family values, low taxes, fiscal conservatism, respecting our military.
You know, our military has had the respect of the whole country.
And dragging them through the political mud demeans our military.
So, Nate, I just want to give folks a little bit more context on that story that you were talking about with the Heritage Foundation.
This is a story from theHill.com talking about that more than a dozen staff from last week, that more than a dozen staffers left the Heritage Foundation and joined Advancing American Freedom, founded by former Vice President Mike Pence, in the latest shake-up for the embattled organization that has become the center of an ideological civil war over the conservative movement post-Trump's future.
The Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts announced the exodus internally in an all-staff email late Sunday, and AAF announced the addition on Monday, nearly doubling the size of the four-year-old organization.
The departures include most of the staff from Heritage's legal and economic centers, Roberts said in the email.
Did you have a follow-up thought to this, Nate?
unidentified
I did.
I do.
Yeah.
You know, we've pushed being for life and against abortion.
Mike Piantas is the only one that has said there should be some restrictions on abortion.
We have all three branches of government.
Did you hear anything about abortion?
We have more abortions today than ever.
And the worst kind is when you can receive a pill through the mail and nobody even knows it's being done.
And this administration just approved another pill for abortion.
I thought we were against abortion.
And you got Scott Bessett, who is married to another man.
He's openly gay, raising two kids in a big pink mansion.
Good grief.
What do we stand for?
Do we stand for traditional family values anymore?
All right, that's all the time we have for Open Forum just now.
But coming up, we are going to continue with our annual Holiday Authors Week series here on Washington Journal.
We have been in the midst of nine days of authors from across the political spectrum whose books shine the spotlight on important aspects of American life.
This morning's featured author is former Republican Congressman Chris Gibson of New York on his book, The Spirit of Philadelphia, a call to recover the founding principles.
We'll be right back.
unidentified
Today, on a special edition of Ceasefire, host Dasha Burns features key moments from Ceasefire's inaugural season, highlighting moments of friendship and humor, respectful disagreement.
The thing that I appreciated about Rob is while we differed, particularly after he led the charge for the Democrats to defeat the Republican majority in 2006.
Washington Journal is going to continue with its annual Holiday Authors Week series.
And this morning, we are in the midst of nine days of coverage of conversations with America's top writers from across the political spectrum, talking about a variety of public policy and political topics.
This morning's featured author is former Republican Congressman Chris Gibson of New York on his book, The Spirit of Philadelphia, a call to recover the founding principles.
Mr. Gibson, welcome to Washington Journal and thank you for joining us.
So most explicitly in this book, I'm talking about the convention.
The Constitutional Convention took place in the spring of 1787.
You know, our leaders at the time were very concerned that our new confederation, we were under the Articles of Confederation then, were failing.
And there was a sense that if they didn't do something to improve the situation, that states would start leaving the Confederation, entering into trade and security arrangements with other nations throughout the world, especially in Europe.
And, you know, they had tried several times to amend the articles, and they had failed every single time, including the one immediately previous in Annapolis in 1786.
And the reason why the book evokes the term the spirit of Philadelphia is it was an unexpected gift.
They actually finally found a way to compromise the issues between most immediately how to erect a legislature that at once could provide for populist impact, influence on the government.
And you had the large states wanted to have a skewing of the power arrangement so that the populous states really enjoyed significant influence.
But then you also had smaller states and they had a point of view too.
And so with the Connecticut compromise that actually created the bicameral legislature with the House being based on population and the Senate, each state would get two senators appointed by the legislature of the respective states.
But it was that compromise that actually unexpectedly created the spirit.
The spirit of Philadelphia, the notes on the Constitution, the whole vibe in the place in Philadelphia changed.
They realized we can do this.
We actually can find a way to mediate and peacefully resolve our differences.
And it allowed them then to take momentum and actually give us an Article II, which gave us a first executive branch.
I mean, we had an executive function under the Continental Congress, but it was actually a committee of the Continental Congress.
We create for the first time a separate branch, and then we then followed it on for the first time in human history.
We actually had an independent judiciary branch.
I mean, heretofore, judges were essentially an extension of the crown.
And so this is what I talk about, the spirit of Philadelphia.
It's really that.
Of course, it builds on the spirit of Philadelphia of 1776, but this is a different vibe with the Declaration.
It's not completely put down.
We do incorporate that aspect of the Declaration into this new republic that we've created.
But the spirit itself really talks about what it can mean for humans when you work together.
You actually create common purpose.
And that's what happened.
By the way, the subtext or the subtitle of the book, A Call to Recover Founding Principles, what's important to note here is this is not a call to go back.
That's actually a fiction.
You can never go back.
You can only go forward.
But the book actually makes an argument that the founders made some really wise deductions and decisions about how power should be arrayed so that we don't have abuse, tyrannical abuse.
So it had more to do with the decentralization of power, the separation of national power, which they called federal power, and the checks and balances that were put upon those to bring transparency and accountability to government.
A government that was really centered on the citizen.
And here we're moving from subject to citizen with the republic.
So the call to recover founding principles is a way for humans to go forward in life that I argue is as relevant today as it was in 1787.
In fact, the major ills that we're really living through at the moment in our nation, I think, actually are largely because we don't treat power the same way.
We have centralized power and essentially into one, into the office of the presidency.
And now, and this has been going on now really for over 125 years, this change away from founding principles.
And, you know, even in the last segment, when we listened to the callers, you know, we heard a lot of the tearing of the social fabric, strong views.
We're not trying to homogenize viewpoints, by the way.
What we need is a dispute resolution mechanism that we all agree upon so that we can continue to go forward with common purpose and to resolve our issues peacefully.
You talk about some of the intellectual frameworks that the members attending the convention were using to kind of get to this compromise, to get to this place of philosophy and culture almost.
Well, thank you, because that's really the founding philosophy.
And the curious thing about this philosophy is it was widely embraced.
I mean, we're taught in history, you know, just how much Thomas Jefferson and John Adams would fight like cats and dogs.
And they often did.
They disagreed probably on 75 to 80% of issues.
But they agreed that the founding philosophy of common sense realism was something that actually could unite us.
And here, I make a distinction between philosophy and ideology.
Philosophy, really from, you know, the Greek, the love of wisdom, really has to do with who we are.
It answers the Delphic command of know thyself, who we are as a people.
And the founders concluded, I think, significantly, that we were conflicted, that humans could at once be capable of extraordinary love and even sacrifice if called to it.
But if we're being very brutally honest, we all have in us these angels, these what's sometimes called darker angels.
Have this selfishness occasionally that could be a problem.
We have even we can be summoned by fear and anger, and that can lead to brutal actions and decisions.
And so, the founders concluded because we were conflicted, we needed to decentralize and separate and check and balance power.
And I think that's very important.
Common sense realism actually starts as epistemological theory.
It's coming out of Scotland.
It largely has to do with how we learn as humans, how we use our five senses, how we come to know anything.
But in the Scottish hands, you also see a moral dimension.
Francis Hutchison is one of the first to talk about a moral sense.
David Reed, excuse me, David Hume, even though he's an atheist, actually agrees with Hutchison that we do have a moral sense.
He just said that it came what he called the very constitution of our nature.
But it's this idea as a species that we, when we see something really evil, like murder or abuse of children, that we have a revulsion to it, that sense, that moral sense.
And so, what you start to see with common sense realism is this joining of knowledge with morality.
And then the founders actually take it to another place.
They actually join the knowledge with the morality with philosophy, political philosophy.
And so, you know, this is how we get the founding philosophy, this idea of juxtaposing power.
And, you know, it united us.
Even though we had issues that divided us, essentially this system worked for us with one major exception, and that was slavery.
We'll talk about that in a second.
But the whole point at the Constitutional Convention with this unexpected gift of the spirit of Philadelphia is the Constitution itself was a compromise meant to drive future compromises.
That was the whole point.
And so what we found with our issues at the time is that the system actually was working as intended.
So even when we had the first order moral question of slavery, what did the system do?
Well, it did exactly what the system was designed to do.
We actually went into overdrive to find compromise.
That's why in school we learned about the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and that didn't fully take.
So we had the Compromise of 1850.
We had the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.
The point here being is that the founders actually created a system around the Constitution that allowed for humans to actually continue to have freedom of thought, freedom of expression, but they had a dispute resolution mechanism to resolve issues with that one major exception of slavery.
And I must say, Kimberly, that the founders really believed that when they brought forward the Constitution, Madison in Federalist Paper 42 actually says, look, aren't we essentially, weren't we geniuses?
We actually found a way to get the South to ratify the Constitution, yet we put slavery on a path to extinction.
And that, of course, is the importation ban of 1808, along with the same year, the Congress passing the Northwest Ordinances prohibiting the extension of slavery into the territories.
But that assumption turned out to be flawed.
You know, we know that we get the cotton gin in 1797.
It changes the profitability of bringing forward cotton into the market, including across the world, and that changed the aspect and dimensions on slavery.
And so what they believed was going to be an institution that died out, did not die out.
And then you had a system that was hotwired for compromise that couldn't resolve a first order moral question.
And so unfortunately, since While we resolved the issue of slavery, we finally got rid of this heinous institution.
Common sense realism after the Civil War was in decline.
And we have not had a common philosophy since that time.
We've had really, which we always had divergent ideologies, but we always at least agreed on who we are as a people and how we should erate power.
That has changed.
Now we've had different ideologies, but we've also had cultural movements like populism and even a new political philosophy, progressivism, which is a form of idealism that centralizes power contra to the founding principle.
So, you know, that I think is a major response, but and maybe that'll help prompt some further questions, including from the audience.
But that's when I argue for recovering the founding principles is that we're now in a position in our country where we've so consolidated power.
Whereas in the past we had to work together or we had to keep the status quo, that very process of working together, just as it did in Philadelphia, it created a spirit of common purpose and reasonableness.
But you highlight in the book that the delegates came with a different set of criteria than maybe many Americans today are coming to these conversations, and maybe even that many members of Congress are coming to these conversations you write about, how well prepared and well-read the delegates were, that they have these philosophical frameworks for it.
And there's also the expectation that the founders had of the American people.
I want to read an excerpt where you talk about this.
And you say, the founders understood that this form of government would not work without an educated, informed, and engaged electorate.
Channeling Montesquieu, the founders recognized that this required the widespread promotion of a broad liberal education aimed at cultivating virtuous citizens capable of critical thinking.
Cultivated in this way, citizens would safeguard their freedoms and, as active voters, would serve as a check against fanciful government proposals and actions.
Do we have that kind of educational system and educated populace, especially when it comes to civic education?
And, you know, importantly for the founders, they actually had a very broad view of education.
You mentioned, I think, the three key operative verbs there.
You know, we're talking about educated, informed, and engaged.
They're all different.
And this idea of a broad liberal education, the whole point of it was, if I had to distill it down, it's essentially knowing the best and the worst that humans have done over the course of history.
That's the whole point of emphasis of the classics in my book, is that we need to learn.
So it's just, it's reading widely about humans that have been in certain circumstances and did well and others that did really poorly.
And so that's part of what the founders intended for education.
But education itself was actually three different realms.
It wasn't like when you mentioned the word education today, everybody thinks immediately of the schoolhouse and we immediately devolve into whether or not you're pro-union or against the teachers or whatever.
Oh, this is crazy.
The founders essentially had a robust view of education and there were three realms.
The first realm was the family.
So remember, we were mostly extended families then because we were largely a farm, but the family had a role in education, a very important role.
The second realm was, yes, the schoolhouse.
And particularly in New England, you see a major investment.
In fact, in the 1650s, they actually passed laws in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that that would be a crime if you didn't educate your young.
So yes, the schoolhouse.
And then the third dimension was the village, was the polis, as Aristotle would say.
And so what the founders, whether you were Jefferson or Adams, and again, they disagreed on so much, but they agreed on this, that this is why Franklin says, you know, a republic, if you can keep it, he apocryphal story he tells to that woman when he's leaving Philadelphia.
He really meant it, that if we weren't educated, informed, and engaged, we'd have a hard time keeping this republic.
The role of government with regard to education was to harmonize these three realms, to make sure that they generally moved in sync, they understood, and we had good synergy between the three, the family, the schoolhouse, and the mentors you would have.
The whole point of that third realm was that you would find a mentor.
You would leave the schoolhouse, you would go out, you'd be a tutor, a mentoree, and you would continue to learn.
Learning for the founders was a lifelong endeavor.
Well, first thing we have to recognize, I mean, there's a number of things here, but it starts with the power arrangements.
I mean, this was initially, incidentally, I could not find malice.
I mean, when I would be a member of Congress, I would do town hall meetings.
I would meet with folks.
And, you know, somewhat concerningly, I would hear folks express themselves, but they were convinced that the opposition was evil.
Not that they were wrong, but they were evil.
They were intentionally trying to ruin the country.
My research does not point to that when we were essentially de-emphasizing founding principles.
What happened is that increasingly in the late 19th century, there were new ideas that were moving in the ether, most of them coming by way of Europe.
One of these sets of ideas was German idealism.
And it was the belief.
I mean, Hegel is very important here, Max Weber, but they just sincerely believed that the state was going to perfect humans.
You know, this idea that we're conflicted, that, you know, they believed that actually that could be, you know, taken out of humans by the state, by a well-regulated state.
And so what happens over time with the advent of the industrial age, we see industrialization, modernization, urbanization, technological advancement.
By the time you get to the late 1880s, you have a young guy, Woodrow Wilson at the time, writing his dissertation.
And he's basically saying, look, the founders got it precisely wrong.
They said we need all these checks and balances because we have to prevent against tyranny.
He says that actually just ends up getting in the way.
With all this quick change in society today, we need to move fast.
Yeah, so I just need to make this final philosophical point, and I will transition.
It's the whole point that when we move to centralized power, because we thought we were doing right, we thought we could do more good for more people.
You know, what ends up happening is by second order effect, when you do political change by one person, when you increasingly give that power to one person, then you're not even required to work together anymore.
I mean, heretofore, when we got major change in this country, the representatives representing the people had to listen to each other, and they had to do the hard work of coming together with an accommodation.
What they found is not only did that make the representatives closer, it actually knitted together a fabric for the country.
The country realized, well, I guess if we want to improve, we're going to have to compromise.
We're going to have to work together.
When we consolidated power in that way, we actually circumvented the process, this cathartic process of working together.
So, how do we recover it?
That's really the question.
Well, we need to start by actually rebalancing power.
So, it starts with so many of these powers that a president from either party can use.
And we've seen power abused by presidents of both political parties.
They've taken us off to war without the consent of the governor.
That was never the intent.
I mean, the Federalist Papers, they're very clear as to what the limits were on the executive.
The power to declare war and to authorize force was with the people's representatives.
We are so far from that now, and both parties have played a role in that.
So, what I'm arguing in the book, now when you ask about policy prescriptions, that's the last third of the book.
The first third of the book is philosophy.
The second phase is all history.
The third is the policies that help us recover these founding principles.
And so, what you need to do is rebalance power.
That means sunsetting the emergency clauses.
Bringing forward, I had a bill in Congress, the War Powers Reform Act.
It actually had 52 bipartisan sponsors.
Unfortunately, it did not become law, but it's still out there and it gets reintroduced every Congress.
It needs to be enacted into law.
But if you think about the one of the things we are sort of fighting about now is tariffs.
And we know that the founders intended for the people's representatives to actually be the ones responsible for tariffs.
But yet we see the president now coming forward.
Why is that?
Well, it's because of emergency powers that were granted by the Congress.
So, you know, I want to dismiss in most cases, not all, but in most cases, this was not a power grab by the president so much as the Congress pushed all of this off because it made for an easier re-elect for them to not have to take hard votes on record.
We can't have it that way.
We need to sunset these emergency clauses, for example, with tariffs.
We need the War Powers Reform Act.
I argued that there's a bill on regulation.
The people's representatives should be more involved in approving or disapproving some of the bureaucratic rules that are proposed, because again, that's consolidated power and moved it beyond the people.
So, I have a series of reforms that address this power relationship.
You mentioned term limits.
I mean, part of the issues we're also dealing with is the fact that we're at the lowest levels of confidence and support in our institutions and our leaders since we've been doing polling.
I mean, this is absolutely the lowest level of faith in government and in its leaders.
And so, what I argue is, that's actually because now the system, unfortunately, having served six years down there, I wish I could look you in the eye and say that this system is not rigged, but it is.
It's rigged.
And it doesn't matter which party.
I mean, let me give you a data point here, Kimberly.
You know, the fact is, is Congress as an institution's, its approval rating is like 13 or 14 percent.
Yet every cycle, the re-election rate for incumbents is close to 100%.
It's always over 95%.
It's sometimes 99%.
I mean, it just doesn't compute.
Why is that?
It's because the rules are rigged.
I mean, it's not just incumbency and the problem with recurring members when the founders always viewed that you do this for a season and go back.
It was never meant to be a career.
But then there's also issue of money in politics.
So there's a series of reforms that I'm offering in the book that I believe can help restore faith and confidence in our ability to be self-governing.
So, Gary, I believe that the language is used because they founded the country as it exists today while acknowledging your point about the Native Americans who were living here.
But did you have a specific question for Mr. Gibson?
unidentified
Well, my specific question is, well, they say invaded, Father.
I don't want to give the impression that the founders were perfect.
We know this isn't true, right?
They're humans.
And as we mentioned at the outset, the assumption is they are conflicted.
But here are some facts is that since the founding, you know, we have seen scores, and I'm talking scores of countries who have tried to be like us.
They've actually adopted constitutions similar to us.
We, in fact, changed the way humans, our species, lives on the earth.
Before us, we were living in a period of the divine right of kings and queens and aristocracies.
It was the idea, if you were born a serf, you died a serf.
And that's just the way it was.
And, you know, in our country, you just said, no, it's not going to be like that.
You have the right.
You're the author of your life.
Now, they did want that balance.
You not only were the author of your life, but you were supposed to live with obligation towards others.
Kimberly had pressed me on this point on virtue, self-governance.
This was part of the assumption for a republic, is that individuals would balance the needs that they certainly expected our citizens to act in a self-interested manner, but they wanted that to be balanced by the obligations we had towards others.
And the reason why I think it's significant is that over time, and it didn't take very long at all, but you saw countries all over the world drop divine right of kings and aristocracies, and they started moving towards republics.
And this is what we have done.
This is the way we've changed the way that humans live.
Now, the issue on those that were left out at the founding, absolutely, and this is where I mentioned at the outset of my remarks, I talked about how the Declaration of Independence wasn't put down.
It wasn't.
It was actually incorporated into this new republic, and it was a North Star.
It was the idea that we're always looking towards improvement.
And this is why Dr. Martin Luther King actually talked about the magnificent founding.
And he also said that I refuse to believe that the mightiest country in the world is bankrupt and the bank of justice.
And so he wanted to use, in fact, he said he had a dream.
He said it was deeply embedded in the American dream.
And so here's somebody who clearly understood the Enlightenment and he understood the possibility of American life by these very founding principles.
And he wanted his children to be judged, not not judged, judged, but judged by the content of their character.
And he wanted all peoples to have a shot at this American dream.
And he did change the arc of our country with our Civil Rights Acts of 64 and 65.
And I think it's another testament.
So again, I'm not suggesting at all that these founders were perfect.
And we know that's not true.
And I mentioned also the original sin of slavery, which we eventually eradicate.
But it is this point that what the founders concluded about us as a species, I believe is still true to this day.
And that, in fact, when we're not working together, it's because we've consolidated power.
We're living with the legacy of this.
We have changed our moral ecology.
And now we believe we can affect political change by one person.
So your point, that's, you know, the founders really did not want to homogenize thought.
They actually, you can go back to not only Philadelphia, but you can actually go to the House of Burgess in Virginia when they were working on the Religious Toleration Act.
That actually was a key moment because Madison actually evolved.
He changed his view on a republic.
He actually, before the Religious Toleration Act, he actually agreed with the Council of the Wise since time out of memory.
Aristotle, Cicero, Plebius, they all believed that the only way a republic could work is if you kept it small and homogeneous.
You can't make a large republic.
And there was this one obscure philosopher at the time, David Hume, and he actually argued exactly opposite.
He said that the one way you can keep a republic is if you extend the sphere, if you actually have multiplicity of factions, because they cancel each other out.
Madison didn't really agree with Hume until he went through the experience of the Religious Toleration Act.
And we had this awkward phase in the country where we had declared independence, but yet we still, at the local level, a lot of our mores and life culture was similar.
So we, the people, we were actually paying for Anglican pastors.
And yet, if you were Presbyterian or a Catholic, I mean, you were paying for them because we, of course, England had the Church of England.
And so Madison's like, first of all, we're going broke.
We're fighting a war against Great Britain.
And we can't afford to keep paying these Anglican pastors.
So actually, what started over money gets the legacy is the First Amendment to the Constitution.
This idea that you have freedom to believe in God or not, and you can believe in any faith you want.
That actually comes from this experience of the Religious Toleration Act.
So it is this point on diversity.
So Madison actually thought that that multiplicity of views, that wide variety of views, actually helps keep liberty moving forward.
So I don't believe we should drop that.
What we need is a dispute resolution mechanism we agree upon.
And I think what the founders gave us, that general framework of common sense realism that brought together disparate figures such as Jefferson and Adams, by the way, Hamilton and Madison disagreed on so much.
They agreed on common sense realism.
Even Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, obviously they fought a war against each other, but yet they agreed about who we were as a species and how we should array power.
They agreed on common sense realism.
I think if we had a unifying philosophy and then on the level of ideology fought it out like cats and dogs, we'd actually still be doing very well and we would repair the social fabric.
So, you know, the last third of the book are policy recommendations on how we can recover that dynamic, that very important dynamic that changed the history of the world, frankly.
So, you know, I do want to say I have a website, thespiritofphiladelphia.com.
You can learn more about the book, the context.
You can see essays I've written to expound upon this.
I think she's actually, I think that's part of the issue we're having is that, you know, at the outset, we had these wide differences, the diversity, if you will, but we had a shared common purpose.
You know, we had this unifying philosophy, common sense, realism.
So even though we may have disagreed whether we should be a generally agrarian society or, as Hamilton suggested, more a commercial and urban society, and we may have differences on how to approach specifics on education, they all agreed that this had to be a commitment.
We had to be committed to being educated and informed and engaged, all three.
And they agreed on this power arrangements as far as making sure we didn't end up with tyranny.
So what I argue in the book is that, yeah, we should celebrate our diversity, but it must be done when we honor our unity.
You have to do both.
And so much of this book is really about what the classics would call virtue, but it's really balance, right?
It's balance.
Yes, you are the author of your lives, but you have obligations to others.
Yes, the important is now.
I mean, it's the only moment we're living in, but not at the expense of obligations we have to the future, too.
That's the whole point that somebody earlier was talking about, the deficit.
It is a major issue.
The debt and the deficit are issues.
So I think what the founders talked about is: yes, we had this diversity of viewpoints, but they had, they honored their unity.
And I think that was really important.
So we need to have that shared sense of common purpose.
And that comes really from when you array power in a way that you have to work together.
So again, you know, those recommendations, Aileen, I'd love your feedback if you had a chance to read the book and then send me a message on that, because I do think that we have to focus on what you are talking about.
Josie is in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Josie.
unidentified
Good morning.
Happy New Year to all.
I would like to thank Mr. Gibson for his positivity and his energy and his coming back to the basics of the founding of this country.
I'm a retired social studies teacher.
I spent many years teaching physics to ninth graders and trying to bring home that the art of politics is compromised.
And the words in the last part of the introduction to the Declaration of Independence, or pardon me, the ending, where they pledge their lives and their sacred honor.
I have heard Mr. Gibson use the word honor several times this morning, and I'm hoping, hoping that we can return to that.
His energy is contagious, and I'm hoping that people will read the book.
Appreciate you, Josie, and thank you for your lifelong commitment to education.
Is so important.
You led by example.
And look, we absolutely can do this.
There's no doubt in my mind.
I mean, so, you know, I think we all can get to this feeling of the spirit of Philadelphia.
I'm old enough to remember the hockey team.
There have been moments when we've had this sense of shared purpose.
I think of 1980, the Soviets had just invaded Afghanistan.
I mean, our country had said, don't do it.
And they did it anyways.
And we didn't seem to have any recourse.
It seemed like we were becoming impotent and really irrelevant.
We had our own issues.
And here's a bunch of basically above-average skaters, but they had a heart and they had a drive and an energy to work together.
And they did something really special.
And they skated to victory and brought a gold medal home for our country.
And I remember what it felt like to be 16 years old and to actually experience that.
It was unbelievable.
And, you know, unfortunately, we don't get those feelings.
You thought maybe COVID would do that.
It actually did just the opposite.
And I make some arguments in the book as to what happened there, but it really gets back to really a sense of more involvement with each other.
And that's got to come from the hard work of the rule of law, not through fiat, not through executive orders and actions.
By the way, not to say that that's zero.
I mean, George Washington even had some executive orders, but he was always very careful to ensure whatever he was doing with an executive order was in line with the spirit and the letter of the laws that Congress had enacted.
And among the reasons why he termed limited himself is he didn't want it to be about him.
Even though there were those that wanted him to essentially be a king, he literally said at one point, I did not wage war on King George III to become King George I.
He really wanted us to be a republic.
And, you know, so absolutely this is possible.
And it really has to start with us, we the people.
I have a whole chapter just for us.
It's called Notes for Us, We the People.
Because the fact of the matter is, is unfortunately, not only do we need more work to do on education, being informed and engaged, but too often we expect our leaders of any party to give us everything we want right now, and we don't want to pay for it.
And just think about when we were young and our parents told us, if it seems too good to be true, it's probably not true.
I mean, the fact of the matter is, is nothing is free.
I mean, everything comes in anything that we value, anybody who's watching today, you know, you work for it.
You know, Troy, appreciate you calling in, and I hear you on what you're saying there.
Just one clarification on myself.
I served six years, three terms, and then I self-imposed term limits.
I didn't believe I should stay there forever, so I voluntarily left, even though I ran three races and I won them all.
But then I walked away from it, and we had new representatives come from the area.
As far as governments and size, certainly there's a role for the national government.
There's no question on that.
What I'm arguing here is aptness about how we array power.
You know, there is a national set of responsibilities.
There's also state levels of responsibilities.
There's county and localities.
What I've generally found is the most responsive government, and actually the most efficacious, is actually at the local level because, you know, I can walk to my post office.
It's only about 300 yards from here.
I can run into the mayor occasionally and say, you know, you said you were going to do this.
Are you intending to do that?
Or did you change your mind?
So we can really hold our leaders accountable for what they're saying.
We ought to be doing that at every level, but it's easiest at the lowest level.
So it's really a question of aptness.
Like if you're going to do national security, you need to do that at the national level.
There certainly needs to be a facilitation of the economy.
There's going to be a role for the national government there.
We need a justice system that it's not independent of where you are.
So there aren't certain set of responsibilities.
What I'm arguing is actually at the founding, they did debate all of this.
I mean, the anti-federalists wanted to keep more of the loci power at the local, more at the lower levels.
We actually strengthened the national government.
That's what they did in Philadelphia is because, you know, even taxation was a suggestion.
And when they found it didn't work, and we had the Shays Rebellion, we had problems every direction, and we almost lost even at the very outset of our country.
We almost lost the country.
So, you know, I just want to say that, you know, this idea of aptness, I think we agree on that.
Yeah.
And as far as knowing your representatives, that's wonderful.
And that's, I mean, I tried really hard to do that in my time that I was serving, is to get to every community and to array my office to serve people and to make it personal.
Mark is in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on our line for independence.
Good morning, Mark.
unidentified
Hello, good morning.
Happy day after Christmas and happy new year to everybody.
And hello to the author.
Sounds very interesting, although I've been inoculated to look for five-minute blurbs online, so I don't read books as much as I should anymore.
I should say not at all anymore.
We're talking about the founding fathers or the founding and politics today.
Since all of you, everything the author's been saying is really pretty much his own opinion.
I'll give my opinion, and he is a thousand times better educated and better spoken than me.
I think our founding fathers were wonderful people, but they were imperfect people.
They did the best they could.
They compromised.
They fought their way through tallacious times, founded a country.
But even the Constitution is not perfect.
And we're learning from the politics of today how many things they didn't really cover in detail that now when someone's really a malign influence, they will find ways to dig here or dig there or fight here, fight there, and warm their way around things.
They never wrote this Constitution to deal with a malign influence.
They were men of honor.
They were men of bravery.
They were men that pledged their fortunes to the founding of the country.
They never figured that somehow someone would get control of our government and do the things that we're seeing done today.
Consequently, I think maybe our Constitution needs to be firmed up or supported or whatever.
There was a caller yesterday, a Republican caller, bragging about the Constitutional Convention that they've got many states lined up for on the Republican side.
I think Democrats better jump on that pretty darn quick themselves before things get a thousand times worse than they are.
I guess rather than go on and on and on, I'd like to hear what your guest has to say.
You know, a number of the Federalist papers actually do talk about their concerns that a demagogue will get control of the government.
And so what they're trying to impress upon people, because they knew they had a choice, they could either vote for ratification of this new legal arrangement or not.
And they tried to assure them, look, that we have put checks and then auxiliary checks to prevent, they actually use the word scoundrels.
It's the words they use.
Scoundrels will get control of the government.
And here they're really talking about somebody who's a cipher, somebody who's a demagogue.
And that was the whole purpose why they had an electoral college.
I mean, so much of these checks and balances are designed to sort of confound those who are scoundrels, who are trying to gain malign interests is what the word you are using.
I just want to assure you that they did, in fact, spend a lot of energy.
You can say whether or not they were effective or not, but they put so much energy in trying to protect us from malign interests.
As far as the empowerment, you know, the changes over time, well, actually, you're actually on something there because the major problem they were having as they arrived in Philadelphia was the government didn't have enough power, the national government.
And that's the reason why, you know, we had issues with Chase Rebellion.
We had issues with really providing for facilitation of commerce is because we really weren't a nation.
We were a confederation by choice.
And, you know, we chose the word state intentionally.
We were 13 free.
And when one goes back and reads the Declaration of Independence, you'll see that we declared ourselves to be free and independent states.
And then in 1777, we confederated.
We brought a Confederacy together.
It's not exactly like the EU, but it's more like the EU than it is today when they did the Articles of Confederation.
So I did want to address those two points.
With regard to reading, I will tell you that this is really what Madison helped set an example for because every, and actually Kimberly was alluding to this at the outset of this show today, you know, every attempt at directly solving the problems we're having had failed.
They actually had tried explicitly in Annapolis to address the defects of the Articles of Confederation.
And so they actually tried an entirely different approach in Philadelphia.
I call it the indirect approach or the philosophical, intellectual approach, but essentially they read widely.
In fact, Jefferson helped.
He was stationed in Paris at the time.
He sent a whole truck load of books.
I mean, over 200 manuscripts he sent to Madison.
He read everything he could get his hands on, and he shared it with his friends to show up because they thought they needed to do a different kind of approach.
That's why they actually started with who are we as a species and then said, okay, so now that we have some deductions about the kind of people we are, we are conflicted.
We're not perfect, but conflicted.
Now we're going to have to array power in a certain way to protect against malign interests.
So that's a long way of saying we need to read more books.
We need to be like Madison.
I am arguing that we do need to take a step back because even today in 2025, all these attempts, you know, to try to make remedy of this directly through politics have failed us.
What I think we need to do is take a step back and ask some broader philosophical questions.
You know, as bad as our politics are, I think our biggest issues are actually philosophical at this moment.
And it starts with us, the way we live our life and balance, but it's also the way we've arrayed power.
So anyways, you can be the judge.
You can take a look and send me some feedback on the website.
Again, the website for the book is thespiritofphiladelphia.com.
You can get on that and take a look and read some context, some reviews of the book, and hopefully read it and send me feedback.
So it really had to do with this idea of improvement.
You know, they were proud that they had actually prevailed in the revolution.
They thought the articles were the right way to go forward, but they learned it didn't work.
And so now a more perfect union was the acknowledgement that the articles didn't work.
And that, and incidentally, to allay anybody's concerns out there, because I've heard a couple of the callers make a point that the Constitution wasn't perfect.
They would be the first to say it.
In fact, George Washington thought, well, maybe it'll give us 20 years and we'll go from there, right?
And they really managed expectations about how long this would last.
Who knew that so many other countries around the world would actually mimic it?
And to this day, it's the longest standing stable constitution in the world.
So a more perfect union was the idea that we needed to be able to adjust.
So I also want to make that point.
Some people say, well, you know, the Constitution was never meant to change.
That's not true.
They knew, that's why they actually put a way to amend it that was actually more workable than the one they were discarding.
I mean, the Articles of Confederation required all 13 states to agree, or you didn't change it.
I mean, so when it came time for the Constitutional Convention, guess what?
Rhode Island didn't even send anybody because they concluded if we don't send anybody, they can't change it.
And of course, we know we did change it, and Rhode Island eventually regretted they didn't send anybody there.
But the founders intended for that document to breathe.
And for each generation, now it's only been amended 27 times, but it has been amended 27 times.
And the fact is, it could be amended a 28th time if we have the will and if we have the leadership.
And I make one other point.
Somebody was making a point about presidential leadership.
I don't want to suggest for a moment we don't need presidential leadership.
No, it's good to have leadership.
The difference is that if we have presidential leadership that actually gets the respective parties to work together, we can actually change law.
We're a nation that's proud that we often call ourselves a nation of laws, but lately we actually really questionable whether that's the case because we do so much political change now by fiat, by executive orders and actions.
And I'm talking about regardless of party.
We've seen presidents from both political parties do change that way.
And it really circumvents this laborious process, true, but one that was meant to stitch together a nation, a psychological community, you know, with common purpose.
My question is: does he think that it's not right to become a millionaire billionaire and be taking your money out of the country and hiding it in other countries and calling yourself a patriot?
I don't think that's a patriot.
If I was to become rich someday and to take my money and hide it in another country, so I wanted to pay the taxes here, I think that's absolutely wrong.
Yeah, so Ed, I do discuss this phenomenon in the book.
We talked about how a republic can't long survive without a citizenry if it's educated and informed and engaged.
There also has to be a basic fairness.
Look, Americans are realistic.
We know we're never going to have true equality.
We're humans.
But we want to believe that the system is basically fair.
And, you know, the chasm, the divide between the wealthy and those not wealthy has become deeper and wider.
And it's an issue for us going forward.
I do have some suggestions on how I think we can address some of this, but I'll just list one.
And that is this.
If you have an entity, a corporation, say, that clearly is doing well, what do I mean by that?
Well, they're writing their executives hundreds of millions of dollars in annual compensation, and they're giving very nice dividends to their stockholders.
So if you have a company like that, if you have a corporation like that, you're clearly successful, right?
My point is, take good care of your workers because you wouldn't have been successful if you didn't have workers.
So if you are that successful, first of all, congratulations.
It's good for you.
And hopefully that's good for the country.
But also have that extend to the people who helped you get in that position.
And if we're going to continue to have a situation, I'm a bit polemical in the book here.
I do say that, you know, I came from a working class family.
And why is it fair that I have to pay for your workers?
I mean, if your company is that successful, that you're giving your executives hundreds of millions of dollars.
And I understand they took the risk.
So they're going to get compensated.
But if you're that successful, then why are some of your workers qualifying for food stamps?
And this is not an argument against food stamps.
We need an ability to help people who need help.
What I'm saying is if you're working for a company that's that successful, you should have a living wage.
You should also be enjoying the fruits of your labor.
And so I do argue that I do think leadership can make a difference here.
Leadership can actually inspire companies to do better for their workers, or they can be even shamed to do better.
But either way, they should do better.
Companies that are that successful should ensure that their workers enjoy a living wage.
And there are other ways in terms of incentives and the way the government tax structure works that if we need to, we can do stuff like that.
But we can't long survive if we continue to see people make enormous amounts of money and then don't take care of their workers.
Now, by the way, there are some companies that are doing that, and good on them, that their workers are living, getting a living wage, and the leadership's also doing well.
But that should be more the norm than the exception.
My question is: I wonder what your opinion is of repealing the 17th Amendment.
When the country was founded, the Senate was they had the responsibility of legislating and representing their states in Washington, D.C.
And when we changed to the direct election of senators, it seems to me that those individuals, all of them, become more concerned about their own election than the welfare and the well-being of their states.
So I'm just wondering, what do you think of repealing the 17th Amendment and going back to the founding perspective where the Senate, where the legislatures elect the senators to represent them, the states in Washington, D.C.
Well, I really appreciate very much just your knowledge of history, and it's important because, you know, whenever we talk about reform today, certainly it's in play.
I just made comments moments ago that the founders intended for us to review these assumptions and see if they still work for them.
But I also think it's important to know why they did the things that they did.
And you actually gave a great explanation.
And the founders, it was part of the whole design, this idea of decentralizing and then even separating power, the national power, and then checking it, right?
Having checks and balances, transparency, accountability.
And so having the state legislatures actually essentially a point, but vote within the legislature on who the national senators are going to be was all part of the design because it was meant to really ensure that the state's interests were also protected in this bicameral legislature.
Look, Cindy, realistically, I don't think we're putting the chini back in the bottle, but we should also, that is to say, I don't think we're going to repeal that.
But we ought to acknowledge so that we can fairly assess on how well this design is working going forward.
I mean, it was intended to help empower the states.
I wouldn't say it completely neutered the states.
It did de-emphasize state power.
And so the question is going forward, are there other reforms that, if we need to, that could shore up the state power short of going backwards?
I don't think we're going to, I don't think it would be supported to go backwards.
But I have to tell you, I wish there had been more consideration before we went forward in that way, because I think that had they gone to the direct election of senators, they might have done some other actions that actually ensured that the dynamic between the national government and the state government didn't get to where it is today in 2025.
I mean, you know, I mean, I do have concerns that we have situations where we have troops that are being sent to states when the state leaders are not really asking for that help.
So just as somebody who believes in this balance of power, By the way, it's not zero according to the Constitution.
There are stipulations when the executive can take action, even if the governor is not supportive, but we haven't really seen that all lined up.
So it gets to the point, actually, it's related to the issue of senators and how they're sent there because it has to do with the power relationship and arrangement between federal and state.
I don't know if you're familiar with the term that those who suffer from illusions can never become disillusioned because either you're now, I like the concept that you have, but there's some things that you're missing.
A few minutes back, you said that the conundrum that we find ourselves in is philosophical, but it's not because the Supreme Court has been gerrymandered.
Politics, our politicians are gerrymandered.
And because of that, it's the way that Republicans are getting around the Constitution and getting around checks and balances.
So, what say you that how do we trust now our government when it's so gerrymandered and preconditioned to go a certain direction that clearly we know it's not virtuous or they want to go down a unitarian design or philosophy where that's not what America, the majority of the American people want?
Yeah, so where I still think that comes from is a change of heart when it came to animating ideas.
You know, what I'm arguing is that at the outset, the founders, yeah, they thought that we were capable of extraordinary love and sacrifice, but they also thought that we had darker angels, that we could be summoned by anger and fear and to be under the sway of a demagogue.
So, they separated by philosophical design, they decentralized and separated and checked power to prevent us from being abused in that way.
And incidentally, at the individual level, started with a belief that we needed to self-govern.
Yes, they expected us to advance our interests, they didn't expect otherwise, but they always wanted us to keep in mind the greater good of society.
And so, I think what's happened today is over time, in part because of the information age, too, the way we share information, but we're out of balance individually, and we're out of balance when it comes to government structure.
So, and I want to make this clear that I'm for a balance.
So, but when I look at three different dimensions, I see us out of balance.
So, the first is the balance between the individual and the obligations we have towards others.
I wouldn't want to be in a country that didn't value the individual.
Oh my gosh, no, the individual should be valued, but balanced with the obligations and the greater good.
That's the first set of power relationships.
The second has to do with the now and the future.
Yes, the now is important.
It's the only dimension we live in at the moment, but we also have obligations to future generations.
We need to keep that in play as well.
And the third is actually between the spiritual and the material.
Now, for me, it's God, but it may not be God for everybody, but there's something about us as a species we have to agree.
There's mystical.
We can't fully explain.
You know, we can't fully explain our existence.
And so, we have to accept the fact that there is a mystery that comes with life.
I call that the spiritual dimension.
And my point is, is that I meet too many Americans today and they're like, Chris, I don't get it.
I have all these achievements.
I've got all this money.
And yet something's missing.
And I feel like after I listen, I want to say, look into that.
There is something missing.
There is, we're missing a balance today.
We think that today we can solve all our problems with more materiality, whether that be more money or a pill or some kind of surgery, when sometimes we just really need to look inside ourselves and just really be there and be uncomfortable in it and sort of think about that and try to find a way to get this balance.
So that's the individual side, balancing those three different realms.
At the government realm, we've consolidated so much power into our national government that we're outshining some of these other important levels of government.
And furthermore, within the national government, we've consolidated so much power into the office of the presidency that we circumvented our process of catharsis, of having to work together.
So I do argue that even though I can see your points, I absolutely see your points, my point is that I do believe that they are at the realm.
They're really philosophical.
We have to come to that understanding and then we can take the tangible, if you will, the practical solutions once we confront the philosophical imbalances we have.
We're going to have more of our callers representing themselves coming up next.
We're going to be joined with you all in open forum.
You can start calling in now, Republicans at 202-748-8001, Democrats at 202-748-8000.
And Independents at 202-748-8002.
We'll be right back.
unidentified
Today on a special edition of Ceasefire, host Dasha Burns features key moments from Ceasefire's inaugural season, highlighting moments of friendship and humor, respectful disagreement.
The thing that I appreciated about Rahm is while we differed, particularly after he led the charge for the Democrats to defeat the Republican majority in 2006, I always felt like...
We ought to just commit ourselves to love and justice, not hatred and revenge.
unidentified
One of the wonderful things that I've been able to experience with my very dear brother, Robert George, is that I love the brother when he's right.
I love him when he's wrong.
I love him when he's wrestling in his quest for truth.
Watch our special bipartisan moments from this season of Ceasefire, today at 7 p.m. Eastern, only on C-SPAN.
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We're in open forum, ready to take your calls and comments on public policy issues of the day.
But first, some of the recent comments from the President of the United States in light of the holiday.
This was a post from President Trump yesterday.
Merry Christmas to all, including the many sleaze bags who loved Jeffrey Epstein, gave him bundles of money, went to his island, attended his parties, and thought he was the greatest guy on earth, only to drop him like a dog when things got too hot, falsely claimed they had nothing to do with him, didn't know him, said he was a disgusting person, then blame, of course, President Donald J. Trump,
who was actually the only one who did drop Epstein, and long before it became fashionable to do so.
When their names get brought out in the ongoing radical left witch hunt, plus one low-life Republican Massey, and it is revealed that they are Democrats all, there will be a lot of explaining to do, much like there was when it was made public that the Russia-Russia-Russia hoax was a fictitious story, a total scam, and nothing to do with Trump.
The failing New York Times, among many others, was forced to apologize for their bad and faulty election reporting, even to the point of losing many subscribers due to their highly inaccurate fake coverage.
Now the same losers are added again, only this time so many of their friends, mostly innocent, will be badly hurt and reputationally tarnished.
But sadly, that's the way it is in the world of corrupt Democrat politics.
Enjoy what may be your last Merry Christmas, President Donald J. Trump.
So he mentioned Massey, the Republican, in his comments, and Thomas Massey, Representative Massey, responded to the president's comments on X, saying, Merry Christmas to you too, Mr. President.
So I've teamed up with radical left Democrats to expose Democrats.
This 4D chess is fun.
All right, we are in open form and ready to take your comments.
We're going to start with David in San Francisco on our line for independence.
Good morning, David.
unidentified
Hello, Morning.
Kimberly.
Yeah, I had been in line there to speak with the former congressman.
I'd speak along those lines still.
I'm not sure if you're familiar.
In 1914, there was a problem with the census.
And previously, in the original Constitution, we were supposed to get a new congressman for every 30,000 people.
30,000 people would be a congressman's workload.
In the middle of the 1800s, it got doubled to 60,000.
But then in 1914, a corrupt Congress decided that they would just top out Congress and that we would no longer get taxation with representation.
We would get a workload on each congressman that was going to grow every day of the week.
Every new person into America, every new person born in America that's a citizen would be the new workload on a congressman.
And so instead of 30,000 per congressman, we've got closing in on a million people.
It's well over 700,000 in many places.
That Texas legislature tried to set it up so that the whites would have 400,000, blacks would have a million and a half per congressman.
So the fraud that's being foisted on America by having Congress topped out at 435 members is the scam that has basically beleaguered us for the last hundred years.
So David, do you think that we should increase the size of the House of Representatives, of the Senate?
What changes do you think we should make to address this?
unidentified
Well, it's the House that's the issue, and of course we should.
The founding fathers thought that the workload should be somewhere between 25 and 40,000, and when they doubled it in the 1800s, they already knew that they were creating a workload on a congressman.
But when you start looking at the different demographics of a congressman, like for example, Bobert's old district is basically an L-shape that goes from Kansas all the way over to Utah on the bottom of the state, and then it goes north to Wyoming.
And so it basically is an encompassing of flatlands, the mountains, the mining, the Air Force Academy, the agricultural section.
It's a fantastic district that has so much in it that one congressperson can't possibly take care of the workload of each of those different demographics.
And there's no way in the world, and Project 2025 knows this.
The scoundrels of 1914 that set this up were basically the scoundrels of today in Project 2025, the massive industrialists that wanted to take away taxation with representation and set it up so that a congressman would be subject to a bribe of they could have bribed someone 25 years ago and that bribe would still work on their vote.
All right, well, I do want to let a couple of other folks get in here today.
So let's hear from Pat in New York on our line for independence.
Good morning, Pat.
unidentified
Hi, good morning.
Thank you.
I agree with the last caller in a lot of things.
Also, Wilson gave away a lot of power to the internal, I think, revenue.
But anyway, going on, I was listening to the speaker, Gibson, and I just wanted to comment that I respect the values that he was discussing here about his book on self-government.
But I wanted to say that the virtue and honor of self-government, copied from the Roman classical period, failed in this country, as it has in other places throughout history.
A Roman historian, Sallust, who was a politician and historian, said it was the political party divide in self-government that destroyed the republic.
And the problem here is not just increasing the amount of people in Congress to represent the people, but increasing the views of having different political parties.
I believe in Italy we once had 50 different political parties.
It was much more difficult to polarize a nation between left and right and just create the frenzy of people who were dedicated either to one side or the other side, but more dedicated to an ideal or issues specifically.
I want to say our revolution 200 years ago was not against King George, who was a constitutional monarch, but a British parliament that was in power since 1720 who put the taxes into this country that catalyzed the war.
We've been conditioned to believe that central authoritarian government does not work.
And that's also from the abortion that we now have of financial authoritarians who control this country today in the executive office.
America, 325 million people can vote for one of two people into the presidency.
They've been propped up by financial powers in this country.
I can't vote for, as a Democratic independent or free person, I can't vote for, let's say, Tony the Pizza Guy down the street.
I can only vote for whoever they prop up in front of us.
So it's controlled.
It's manipulated, like Gibson also stated.
It's something that's already orchestrated.
It's staged.
And this is why we don't go anywhere.
And the people, if they had a hand in molding a leader, that might help.
But they're incapable of governing themselves.
Our evolution is showing that it doesn't work.
The last four decades of self-government have been a slowly increasing disaster.
The ecology problem, what's happening in Gaza.
It's an open wound on our democratic self-governing system.
So the only thing that can force out a bad authoritarian is another authoritative power, another force.
You know, physics says only force can counter force.
And, you know, I see even the military leaders in this country disgusted with what's going on here.
So, you know, we can't be mentally programmed to think that we can democratically and freely protest and make changes because if we don't take some kind of action, the change will never happen.
And looking back at what's happening, the issues I mentioned, Gaza, the ecology, we're running out of time.
We really need to take matters in our own hands and actually make the changes intelligently because we lack education in this country and we lack philosophical thinking.
We lack a great deal of things.
And until we do have that to self-govern ourselves, we need to put in a proper authority, a moral authority to switch tracks.
I just want to make a couple of statements about the fund that Donald Trump is using for the Army and stuff, that money that he's not giving them anything, it was already there for them.
So, why is he want to take credit for that?
I have no idea.
And another thing I want to say is that that statement that he made about the Democrat, he's nothing but a scum himself.
He can call people scum and stuff because he knows how a scum is.
You know, but you know, he is the president of the United States, which I really don't condone, but you know, we just have to live with it.
And that's what I just wanted to say.
But we need to get together and try and solve something because he is way out there demonizing people, which he is.
And they all follow him like, okay, everything is okay.
No, it's not okay.
This man tearing the country down, downtrodden the country.
So just to follow up on the point that you made about the payments to the military, Axios reports, and these are the warrior payments that the president has mentioned.
While the president did imply in his speech that the checks would be paid for with the administration's tariff revenues this year, the bonuses will be primarily funded through provisions in Trump's signature big beautiful bill, the Pentagon told Axios.
So this was part of that previous legislation rather than attached to the tariff revenues, as you mentioned, Larry.
Let's now hear from Billy in Anderson, Indiana on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Billy.
unidentified
Hello.
I have a few comments I wanted to make about the reason the Democratic Party will probably never be back in office again to start with with probably 30 million illegals come over here and they brought them over here to vote for the Democratic Party.
And also the Easter party that they had at the White House for the drag queen Easter party.
The American people didn't go for any of that.
That was probably one of the main reasons the Democratic lost election.
And taking our religion out of the White House and out of our schools, that's another reason that the Democratic Party will probably never be back in office again.
People's not going to forget about these things.
Have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everybody.
Dwayne is in North Carolina on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Dwayne.
unidentified
Good morning.
And first of all, Kimberly, I want to say that you do an outstanding job.
And the rest of the CNN or the C-SPAN hosts could take examples.
You let people talk and you don't cut them off when you don't like what they say.
You let them speak their peace, which we out here in C-SPAN greatly appreciated.
But first thing, the Democrats, man, I don't know what is the deal.
I mean, first you had Biden said, give me some legislation.
I can't close the border.
That was a croc.
Trump came in and closed the border.
We got the lowest border crossings in our nation's history, not by legislation.
Okay, and I don't know what the Democrats, man, they think men and women are the same as in sports and dressing rooms and all that stuff.
I just don't understand that.
And, you know, and free health care, you know, everybody talks about health care and say, oh, it's against the law for illegals to have free health care.
But you look, each state gets government funding like California.
They use their government funding for health care for illegals.
Okay, but then they go whining to D.C. about wanting more federal funding.
Okay.
D.C., the Trump administration ought to have a say-so what that federal funding is spent for.
It shouldn't be for health care for illegal immigrants.
And one thing, you know, yes, the Supreme Court blocked Trump sending the National Guard into Illinois.
Okay, well, that's the thing.
But Pritzker is not going to do nothing to help his own state except people that's on welfare, the illegal immigrants.
What about the taxpayers in every state?
What about all this taxpayer money that's going out and it's getting fraud?
Look at Mr. Waltz up there, the man that sticks tampons in boys' bathrooms.
Look at the Somali population up there, the billions of scam.
That's just one state of one community.
It's going on in every state.
And one thing, the federal funding should not be allowed if these blue states do not hand over their voter rolls to find out who is voting and if they're illegal, if they're dead.
You know, it's going on and everybody knows it, but they're in denial.
Everybody is in denial.
And my Christmas present this year came back last November.
For four years, we got the greatest president this country's ever had.
And these Democrats are just going to have to get over it.
They can't say, oh, this and that and that.
They had an incompetent administration for four years.
Just look at everything.
They talk about the inflation.
Oh, when Biden come in.
But look at it.
It was higher since the Great Depression or since Jimmy Carter came in.
And it's just, I mean, give Trump a chance.
This stuff don't go through.
The bills that pass don't change overnight, like going out and changing price of money.
Speaking of the bills taking a long time, you mentioned at the beginning of your comments that, you know, about the immigration crackdown happening through executive order rather than legislation, which is what Biden, President, former President Biden had been pushing for.
Do you think that that's a better strategy to have the president managing immigration through executive order compared to actually moving a bill through Congress?
Because our previous guest was sort of talking about the shifting in power and how decisions are made in government.
unidentified
Well, the Democrats say, well, you got the, they say the Republicans has got the House, they got the Senate, and they got the White House.
But I wish you would stress to these people, you got to have 60 votes in the Senate.
Me, my personal opinion, I think they should do away with filibuster because if the Democrats ever get back in, they will do away with filibuster and they'll stack the Supreme Court.
But number one, the number one thing for a president is to protect the people of the United States, not protect all illegal immigrants in the country or in the world coming to our borders.
And the Pope and the rest of the Catholics need to keep their nose out of it.
Immigration does not benefit the country when it milks the country and hurts the American citizens.
Just I'm related to one of the founding families from Philadelphia.
I just wanted to thank Mr. Gibson for his wonderful presentation.
I wanted to say that I called last month, but I wasn't able to finish what I was saying is that the founding fathers, they wrote the founding documents with God's laws.
And the Constitution was the first one that was ever written.
And that 200 years since that in 1776, I mean 1976, every nation in the world, except for a few, endorsed a Constitution.
So, in other words, we have a lot to make up for as far as to embrace our founding documents because right now it's being challenged and disrespected, disregarded.
But I don't want to get negative, but I wanted to focus because the last time I called, I wanted to leave it on a positive note, but I didn't have time to finish.
But the solution is what C's family has, and that is the series that they had several months ago.
It was called The Book That Shaped America.
And that's what Mr. Gibson has mentioned is that education is that we need to get back to a foundation with education, with the family, having books that we can talk, have similarity, and the same with communities and in the government too.
So I was thinking that that would be a wonderful thing for every family to look into this series and make their own library at home.
And the same is true for Congress, that the Library of Congress originally, there was literally a library in the Congress.
Unfortunately, it got burned down when the English came in, and then Jefferson helped replace some of them.
Now, we need to get that library restocked with these books that were in your series, the books that shaped America.
So I'll point out to folks that you can find that entire series that Ross is referencing on our website, c-span.org.
It is, as Ross mentioned, called The Books That Shaped America.
And it was a partnership with the Library of Congress that explored key works from American history that have had a major impact on society.
These books have provoked thought, have been bestsellers, and have led to significant public policy changes and are still talked about today.
Go ahead, Ross.
You wanted to finish up?
unidentified
Yeah, thank you for that.
Yeah, so that's something that we need to get everyone on the same page, literally and figuratively, so that we can honor our past.
Because in that etymology, democracy, you have to know your past in order to know your present and your future.
And we don't know our past, but we need to know our history so we can embrace our present and future.
And also that one thing that what I was saying earlier is that these the founders with presenting the laws, God's laws in part of our founding is that there are laws that they brought in that were universal laws.
All right, let's hear from Ken in Glen Ellen, Illinois on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Ken.
unidentified
Hi, Kim.
Just responding to the president's usual, hateful tweets he's had.
I mean, I suspect you wouldn't talk to anybody like that.
The president talks about Democrats or anybody else for that matter.
You can have mutual respect for each other's opinions, but he doesn't.
He just continually repeats the same stuff.
It's horrible.
And I want to respond to one thing, why I hear the president repeat all the time that Democrats are, that there was a Russia gate hoax or something in 2016.
There was clear evidence that Russia tried to interfere with the 2016 elections, including hacking the DNC.
So that's a lie.
There was no investigation taken out to undermine Trump.
Come here was investigating quite, as he should have been, Russia's flagrant attempts to overturn the 2016 election.
So I just want to clear, I just want to, and otherwise criticizing Democrats as anti-immigrants, as pro open borders.
Biden deported millions of immigrants.
There was an immigration policy.
There were many more immigrants trying to come here during Biden's administration.
So it's obvious that, yeah, he had there was going to be overwhelming of the system, but Democrats are not for open borders.
We're for law and are the same as Republicans are.
But just constantly getting characterized like that is we're just for the dignity of the individual immigrants.
Regardless, we treat all people as human beings, not as illegals, as the Republicans are always saying.
Next up is Joanne in Indiana on our line for independence.
Good morning, Joanne.
unidentified
Good morning.
First of all, I wanted to say I really appreciated Chris Gibson's talk this morning discussion with you.
He's the first Republican or possibly former Republican that I would have gladly voted for since I turned from Republican to Democrat in about 1964.
But that is just the introduction, what I wanted to say about politics in this country.
I think the Republicans, not Republicans specifically, but the Trump worship Republicans have ruined the Republican Party.
And the people on the far left have ruined the Democratic Party.
And I think it's time for a new party to form or find a party to join.
I recommend the Forward Party, although I don't like the name.
They have the same principles, middle of the road, centrist, and getting along, finding ways to work together.
And I hope people will look into that and help build that party to something that could possibly replace one of the other parties that are both dying because of their extremism.
Next up is Charles in Monticello, Florida on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Charles.
unidentified
Yes, good morning.
I so enjoy your show.
It gives us a chance to hear varying opinions.
I just want to say one of the things that's least talked about on C-SPAN is the fact that we have in America and around the world a sin problem, not just the political problem.
Man cannot fix this problem, whether they are state or federal.
The other thing I wanted to say as it relates to our leader and what he's doing is absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The third thing, and there'll be one more real quick.
The third thing is that, one, why are dictators allowed to do what they do?
I teach my government students that dictators are a reflection of the hearts of the people.
And until America gets its heart right, it's never going to fix this problem.
And then one last thing, people need to remember, no matter which party affiliation that you're a part of, we have to understand that one day we're going to have to stand before a just God who knows all hearts.
Next up is Destri in Canton, Ohio on our line for independence.
Good morning, Destri.
unidentified
I have two comments.
One comment is the reason people are afraid to trans is because trans are the most evolved people on the planet.
They don't go by a sex.
They go by a mime.
And people are hard to accept that.
Number two, our government lies to us every day.
When you see the Secretary of State on TV, and he's got a video out called Disclosure on Prime, telling us that they got things in our sky that they don't know what they are.
Now, number one, let's choose a little bit of common sense.
We know that anybody on our planet that had that technology would tell the rest of the world, shut your mouth and sit down.
One thing that you said today about giving the military $1,700 payment for the military.
unidentified
Well, he never gives it to the disabled veterans.
He just gives the act to, and that's great, but he should give it to the disabled veterans also.
And another thing is Trump needs to be careful about what he's doing because he's losing a lot of Republican by doing some of the things that he's doing.
Like I can't get into what everything is doing, but there's quite a few things he's been doing.
The Republican Party is bad.
I used to be a Democrat a long time ago, but then I feel that the Democrats turn the working people.
And so I changed over to the Republican Party.
And I'm kind of a little bit disappointed about what the Republican Party is doing because of Trump.
What are you doing?
But that's just something he's going to have to deal with because he'll never get elected again, and he might ruin it for another Republican to be elected, I think.
I'm going to pause you for a second just because in case folks don't necessarily know what you're talking about.
First of all, very sorry for the loss in your family, but you're talking about the murders of Melissa and Mark Hortman, which also happened around the time of several other murders.
And I'm just going to read here for a bit from the Department of Justice from back in July that Vance Bolter, 57, has been indicted on six federal charges in connection with the stalking and murders of Minnesota House of Representatives Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman, the stalking and shooting of Minnesota State Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette Hoffman, and the attempted shooting of their daughter Hope Hoffman.
And that was announced back in July, those indictments for Vance Holter.
Again, Berta, sorry for the loss in your family, but please continue with your point.
unidentified
I would just like to say something.
The Nation's Institute in Texas, spiritual warfare, their movement is to emphasize religious takeover of seven pillars of a society, including government, education, and media.
And I'm so tired of people saying about Charlie Kirk how great he was and whatever.
Melissa spent over 20 years of her life doing civil real servant duty.
Her whole family is beautiful.
And this has just tore me up.
I have friends that were Trumpers that were my friends.
I'm no longer friends with them.
They all tell me the guns don't kill.
How come none of these people, everybody's fine, and they're fine with Trump saying he can grab anybody's pussy because he has the money.
Well, don't think he's not involved in that scene.
And I want to also say that this political violence started with Trump when he's 2016.
When I also heard him, I've listened to him for years said that.
You can go beat that guy up.
I'll pay for the lawyer.
Well, now he says stuff like this, and he's saying stuff about Jimmy Fallon and everybody else that they should be gone.
Well, this is what happens.
This is what happens.
This is what happened to our family.
And none of you guys give a rat's ass about anything.
Just start looking, please.
I'm an atheist.
I don't believe in religions.
Religion starts wars.
And I'm just sad as hell.
And I don't want to live anymore.
I really don't.
So I hope you all, Christian nationals, just, I don't know.
Thank you to everyone who called in on Washington Journal.
We're going to be back with another edition of the show starting at 7 a.m. Eastern tomorrow, and we hope you'll join us then, and have a good day.
unidentified
Today, on a special edition of Ceasefire, host Dasha Burns features key moments from Ceasefire's inaugural season, highlighting moments of friendship and humor, respectful disagreement, Tim's someone who, even when he disagrees, vehemently disagrees, Tim makes friends across the aisle with everyone.
The thing that I appreciated about Rob is while we differed, particularly after he led the charge for the Democrats to defeat the Republican majority in 2006, I always felt still too soon.