| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Up that when your hair stands up on the back of your neck, that's not enough to charge. | ||
| We still got to conduct an investigation. | ||
| We still have to work with a U.S. attorney and prosecutors, and we still have to have a federal judge agree that there's probable cause to charge. | ||
| These things are hard to do, but this is what we do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Chief, I have a question for you if you don't mind. | |
| What is your message to the people of Mitt Hill State? | ||
| Again, you guys have been going through a lot within your own department, but what is your message to the community of Ment Hill State? | ||
| Very clear, clean, and simple. | ||
| Without the collaborative efforts with all the federal and local agency involved, this clearly would have happened. | ||
| Rest assured that even while you're asleep, law enforcement is still proactively working to keep you safe. | ||
| I can't put it any clearer than that. | ||
| Any additional questions? | ||
| One more question. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So he was currently working at the Burger Kingdom. | ||
| From your knowledge, had you heard any type of concerns from employees or anyone in that area where he works? | ||
| Were there any type of red flags there as well? | ||
| I don't, not to my knowledge. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Anything else? | |
| Well, thank you all. | ||
| Thank you for covering this and happy new year. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Happy New Year. | ||
| Thanks for being here, Josh. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Do you want to escort him? | ||
| Sure. Whichever way. | ||
| Welcome to Ceasefire, where we seek to bridge the divide in American politics. | ||
| I'm Dasha Burns, Politico White House Bureau Chief. | ||
| Happy New Year. | ||
| I'm joined today by two guests who have agreed to keep the conversation civil even when they disagree. | ||
| Former Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy and Democrat turned Independent former West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin. | ||
| You're laughing, but you guys did agree to the civility, all right? | ||
| Thank you both for joining me for our first episode of 2026. | ||
| Thanks for having us. | ||
| All right, you both retired from public service before it was as fashionable as it is today. | ||
| Take a look at this headline from NPR here. | ||
| More than 10% of Congress won't return to their seats after 2026. | ||
| Mr. McCarthy, I want to play a soundbite from you about Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green's retirement. | ||
| Take a listen to yourself. | ||
| She's almost like a canary in a coal mine. | ||
| And this is something inside Congress they better wake up because they're going to get a lot of people retiring and they got to focus. | ||
| What do you make of the state of Capitol Hill right now? | ||
| It's in chaos. | ||
| And what happens is people run on both sides of the aisle because they want to accomplish something. | ||
| If nothing's being accomplished, because they are making a sacrifice. | ||
| They're being away from their family. | ||
| Sometimes it's a long travel. | ||
| You get harassed. | ||
| You get death threats, all the different things. | ||
| But you're willing to make that sacrifice if you can accomplish something. | ||
| When nothing is happening, when it's just pure fighting, people say, I could go spend my time doing something else. | ||
| And it's not good when you see the number of people retiring, but the quality of people. | ||
| Now, I don't, on a natural, people are going to retire. | ||
| And turnover is a natural way, and the election is a natural way to do it. | ||
| But what's happening now is there's fewer competitive seats. | ||
| So the politicians are now picking the voters instead of the voters picking the elected officials. | ||
| And they're trying to do more and more of that now. | ||
| Which is bad. | ||
| Now we're trying to make whole states decide whether they're red or blue. | ||
| And that's bad for the country. | ||
| Remember how the founders were going to have our 250th anniversary this year. | ||
| The founders have designed it where the House, you can flip the House every two years. | ||
| It's supposed to be a microcosm of society closest there. | ||
| The Senate every six years, so it's more grandfatherly, calm it down. | ||
| But predetermining who's elected, that's not good. | ||
| You're taking away the power of the idea. | ||
| Mr. Manchin, what's your take on all of this now looking from the outside in? | ||
| And as we look ahead to 2026 Well, Kevin has a unique outlook on this because he served at the highest level there, so he can see the pitfalls and how you can fall into it and not get things accomplished and how the House operates and what changes the House would have to make. | ||
| I can speak at the Senate being a committee chairman, being on leadership committee, that basically the power does not lie in the committees anymore. | ||
| People want to see process. | ||
| They want to see progress. | ||
| They want to be involved, and Kevin's absolutely correct. | ||
| When you've got nothing going on and you're just twiddling your thumbs and waiting for a couple people in leadership to make a decision, even though it might not be in lockstep with the caucus, whether a Republican majority or Democrat majority, and that's where I think it falls short. | ||
| I always felt, in our side, on the Senate side, Kevin, that if we could have, when we have a piece of legislation that originates in a committee, we work in a committee in a bipartisan way in the Senate. | ||
| It comes out of the committee, whether my Committee of Energy and Natural Resources, you know, any one of the committees, banking or whatever it may be, when it comes out in a bipartisan manner, it would have so many days to cure to get on the floor. | ||
| But within 30 days, it would be on the floor. | ||
| So you want to start voting again, making a decision on this and that based on the need of the committee, you know, because it's not going to go through the committee process unless they think there's a need and it wouldn't even come up. | ||
| Once it gets there, what happens today, I can pass something out of committee in a bipartisan fashion and it goes to the leadership, whether it be Chuck Schumer or our friend John Thune, they can make a determination, does it go to the floor for a vote or not? | ||
| And I think if more people could see, if we do our work at the ground level in the committees, it comes out and we have agreement. | ||
| Now, if it comes out on party line vote, then that's another matter altogether. | ||
| And I don't really blame a leader for not putting that on the floor because it's in the Senate. | ||
| Unless you get 60, you're in problems. | ||
| And without the filibuster, you're never going to have anybody wanting to work bipartisanship. | ||
| Kevin knows 218 votes in the House, they can shove anything to the Senate they want to. | ||
| When it comes to the Senate, for us to pass it, we've got to have bipartisan buy-in. | ||
| Well, look, I think one of the areas that has become the biggest challenge for Congress, and frankly, for the American people, is health care. | ||
| The year ended, 2025, ended without an agreement on the Obamacare subsidies. | ||
| This means people are going to see their premiums go up. | ||
| There is still a ton of debate about this on both the House side and the Senate side. | ||
| Mr. McCarthy, I want to start with you here. | ||
| Where do you see this going? | ||
| Because it just seems like this health care issue is one that people are just really struggling to find common ground on in the Hill. | ||
| Structure dictates behavior, okay? | ||
| So the Democrats put in this extra subsidy during COVID. | ||
| They picked the day it was supposed to go away three years from then. | ||
| You knew three years from now this was going to go away. | ||
| It doesn't go across the board to everybody, only takes a select few. | ||
| About 24 million people to 27 in America. | ||
| So it's not everybody's health care. | ||
| But what we found is the rush that they put in during COVID, which we did a lot of things, it was supposed to be temporary, you found that there was a lot of fraud in it. | ||
| It seems as though that became too partisan. | ||
| The Democrats said it had to go all the way through just another three-year extension or no reforms to it. | ||
| They almost wanted to make it political, what? | ||
| Take it away and I can use it for a campaign to win an election. | ||
| Republicans having the majority should have planned further in advance instead of the last weeks of the year to see how am I going to deal with this. | ||
| So now they've kind of got a political football. | ||
| And remember what happened in the House. | ||
| The Democrats did shut the government down. | ||
| Everybody agree with that. | ||
| But the Senate kept working. | ||
| The House kept everybody away. | ||
| And when you only have a majority for two years, to pass a bill, you have to have a hearing, then you have to have a markup, then you've got to pass the bill, then it's got to go floor. | ||
| You just lost two months. | ||
| Was it a mistake for Johnson to send the House home? | ||
| Look, everybody governs the floor differently. | ||
| I just think in the House, which Senator Manchin was right about, the Senate takes 60 votes. | ||
| The House, you have the power as the Speaker and the majority. | ||
| If you give that power away, you may look at the end of the day. | ||
| Ooh, I gave two months. | ||
| Maybe the Democrats won the shutdown of those two months just by not letting us work. | ||
| How many other bills could we have passed? | ||
| How many things could we brought to the floor that was an 80-20 issue that actually put the Democrats in a bad place for shutting the government down? | ||
| Mr. Manchin, do you think that there is some sort of compromise here that both sides could agree to? | ||
| Where are Democrats and Republicans getting this wrong? | ||
| There's always a compromise. | ||
| You run your life compromising. | ||
| You run your businesses compromising. | ||
| Well, Congress doesn't seem to be doing a whole lot of compromising at the moment. | ||
| Well, that's exactly. | ||
| That's why the people are so exasperated. | ||
| That's why if you see the support, what the favorable ratings of Congress have been all-time lows, it's unbelievable. | ||
| But yes, there's going to be a hybrid. | ||
| People that are getting health care for the first time under Obamacare, working poor, people above the welfare level, they were using the emergency room continuously, or they would claim a workers' comp in order for their health care delivery. | ||
| So they weren't regulated to doctor visits and things of this sort. | ||
| They went whenever they wanted to. | ||
| Now we bring in health care on the lower end. | ||
| I was not for Obamacare. | ||
| I wasn't there then in 2009. | ||
| I would not have voted for it as a Democrat the way it was presented. | ||
| There needs to be guardrails put on it for up to 100, 150 percentile. | ||
| You're going to have to subsidize lower income working people. | ||
| But on the higher level, you need to have the market start working. | ||
| And the Republicans are right. | ||
| You know, the health savings accounts, those are ways basically you make decisions. | ||
| You own your own 401k. | ||
| When your retirement count, it used to be if you worked for a company and they went defunct, you lost your health care, you lost your retirement and everything. | ||
| Then you had 401k, which stays with you. | ||
| No different health care. | ||
| You should own your health care. | ||
| You should get rewarded for healthy lifestyles. | ||
| You should be able to use that money for disasters, catastrophic injuries. | ||
| The market would drive the prices more competitive. | ||
| We don't shop this product. | ||
| The only market in America, we don't shop. | ||
| And I've said this, I know that the women in America have a gene that the men don't have. | ||
| That's a shopping gene. | ||
| They know how to shop. | ||
| You let them shop and basically take care of their family. | ||
| You'll change the whole concept of delivery of health care. | ||
| That needs to be done. | ||
| So the Republicans are right on that. | ||
| The Democrats are right where there needs to be some subsidies on the lower end to help people working, put guardrails on that. | ||
| Kevin was talking about when I was there, I was right in the middle of that when they were extending. | ||
| That was off the Inflation Reduction Act, Kevin. | ||
| And I didn't want to even extend it at all. | ||
| I said, you all should have fixed it by now. | ||
| We basically, the COVID is over with. | ||
| Let's go back to pre-COVID. | ||
| They didn't want to do that. | ||
| They wanted to extend it and extend it forever. | ||
| So we were negotiating. | ||
| We said, well, you have one year to fix it. | ||
| You all have been sitting on your butts, not doing anything for a year, knowing this is going to hit you. | ||
| And they said, well, no, no. | ||
| One thing I would be correct here. | ||
| Where I say structure dictates behavior, remember, Obamacare was passed along party-line vote. | ||
| And it takes up more than 24% of our nation's economy. | ||
| So there was no byproduct. | ||
| And to put the subsidy on it is Democrats admitting that Obamacare is not working. | ||
| And remember, the Inflation Reduction Act was purely partisan. | ||
| Those types of pieces of legislation, and they literally chose the Democrats that said we only need three more years because of COVID. | ||
| They knew they put a cliff on this thing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Kevin, let me tell you even more. | ||
| I was sitting there when they said, no, no, no. | ||
| I said, first of all, I want to defend the Inflation Reduction Act. | ||
| It should have been called the Energy Security Act, because that's what my committee had responsibility for making sure we started producing more fossil, cleaner and better anywhere in the world, so we would have the energy that we needed in our country and we could help our NATO allies who were getting starved by Russia. | ||
| That was the purpose of it. | ||
| They wanted to extend all these social agendas. | ||
| They wanted to extend it out forever. | ||
| I said, listen, one more year and you should have it done. | ||
| They said, oh, no, no, we can't do it during the election year of 2024. | ||
| Let's go out and extend it to 2025. | ||
| That was the consolation. | ||
| That was the reason it was done to 2025, just to get it out of the election year 2024. | ||
| Well, we're finding out no year is good enough because they want to extend it forever. | ||
| Set down and fix it. | ||
| So this is, gentlemen, this is where we are, right? | ||
| You've kind of taken us through how we got here, right? | ||
| But now that we are here and Americans are going to see impact, what do you, Mr. McCarthy, think is the most likely outcome here as we look at it? | ||
| This is going to be debated until the election. | ||
| And you know, election has consequences. | ||
| The voters get to decide. | ||
| So what I would do, I would lay out a very clear health care plan from Republicans, right? | ||
| And take it to the American public and say, if you give us a bigger majority, if you give us the Senate, bring another bigger majority in the Senate, this is the health care we'll do. | ||
| We'll cure the ills of Obamacare. | ||
| We're not going to webway. | ||
| But one thing the senator is very correct, empower the individual more. | ||
| Not the insurance company, not the government, but the individual to have a say in who their doctor is. | ||
| Let them know what the costs are. | ||
| Let them decide what health care wants. | ||
| Let them be able to shop it much as you shop your own car insurance and others. | ||
| And remember, when you're dealing with health care, you could have 10 people, and you could have eight to seven people really focus on it. | ||
| Two people could spend all the money in the world and it will knock everything away. | ||
| So you've really got to focus and get this right. | ||
| Given this health care mess, given the retirements that we've been talking about, some of the early retirements, given some of the revolts that we've seen in the House, if you were in Speaker Johnson's shoes right now, would you be worried about your job? | ||
| No. | ||
| He doesn't need to worry. | ||
| Look, there's a number of things. | ||
| And I'm one that understood what went wrong. | ||
| But the only reason there was a motion to vacate is because Matt Gates slept with an underage woman and wanted me to stop. | ||
| It was a young girl. | ||
| And it came out, but he wanted me to stop the ethics investigation against him. | ||
| Because I wouldn't. | ||
| The day he responded to ethics is the day he made a motion to vacate. | ||
| The Democrats always said they don't believe in that, that it's bad for the House. | ||
| But they decided that day not to vote with me. | ||
| When they tried to remove Johnson before, the Democrats said no on the motion to vacate. | ||
| So I don't believe he has any problem. | ||
| I don't think the Republicans that there's somebody else that could get 218. | ||
| I think President Trump is at the strongest place of any president since Roosevelt. | ||
| So no. | ||
| And the one thing I know about Mike Johnson, I think he's doing a very good job. | ||
| The thing I know about him is you can't govern from fear. | ||
| You've got to just move forward. | ||
| And I think from that basis, he doesn't worry about that because you can't wake up in the morning. | ||
| You govern the way you want to. | ||
| It'll only make you stronger. | ||
| If you were in that seat right now, I mean, you know better than anyone the sorts of pressures that a Speaker of the House faces, especially in moments like this. | ||
| What is the climate for him? | ||
| What is he having to juggle in this moment? | ||
| Well, the challenge is more on discharge petitions. | ||
| So you have to understand. | ||
| In the Senate it's different. | ||
| You have to have 60 votes. | ||
| So you really need both sides. | ||
| In the House, the Speaker has the power. | ||
| In my whole time as a member of Congress, only one time did a discharge petition come up. | ||
| If you're in the majority, and the Speaker then, Boehner, wanted to come, it was the export bank. | ||
| What you want in the House is that the majority, you find bills that unite the majority and divide the minority, right? | ||
| So you get 300 votes. | ||
| A discharge petition is the opposite. | ||
| You're turning the power of the floor, of the majority, over to the minority. | ||
| I think there's been six, maybe seven that have qualified now. | ||
| We've never seen anything like this. | ||
| So what you have to do is go back. | ||
| Structure dictates behavior. | ||
| You've got to unite your party first, your conference, to say, we're not going to go there. | ||
| We can disagree with one another, but we're not turning the power over to the minority that unites them and divides us, because lo and behold, you'll lose the election. | ||
| That's the first place I'd start. | ||
| I also want to move over to the Senate on the leadership question, Mr. Manchin, because Senator Chuck Schumer has also faced a ton of heat from within his own party. | ||
| A semaphore reported last month this headline, Schumer's Democrats push back against a pushback leadership debate, saying the caucus has no real mechanism to jettison Schumer and no appetite to do so, according to interviews with more than half a dozen Democratic senators, but is also torn over whether to even discuss the topic. | ||
| Senator Manchin, what do you make of Senator Schumer's leadership in this moment? | ||
| Well, let me first say this about everything Kevin was saying is exactly correct because on the House side, the Speaker has almost ultimate power there. | ||
| On the Senate side, it's basically the committee strength and the committee chairman used to be strong way back when. | ||
| They basically controlled it, and the majority leader in the Senate was like a traffic cop. | ||
| Then that all changed completely to where the majority leader in the Senate, such as Chuck Schumer, is the same strength almost as the Speaker does, ultimate power, or John Thune right now, who's the majority leader. | ||
| What I wanted to say before, what Kevin was talking about, do you think he should be concerned of his job? | ||
| First of all, Mike Johnson should understand, this is not a profession. | ||
| This is not your livelihood. | ||
| It was never intended to be. | ||
| Public service is public service. | ||
| It's not self-service. | ||
| It's not a career. | ||
| You get in there. | ||
| I'm almost committed now, more so than ever, on term limits is what we need to maybe get one good term out of everybody. | ||
| So Mr. Manchin, do you disagree? | ||
| Do you think Johnson should be concerned about his job? | ||
| It makes no difference whether he should. | ||
| I would never be concerned about it. | ||
| I never did care if I lost or not. | ||
| I was just going to do what I thought was right. | ||
| I could go home and explain it. | ||
| If Mike Johnson can explain sending everybody home for a seven-week vacation, then God help the people of Louisiana. | ||
| If he can explain they're getting paid when no one else was getting paid and the government shut down and he can go sell that back home, then there's a problem, okay? | ||
| Now there's no way you can do that. | ||
| Quit paying them. | ||
| If you're not going to work, you can't get paid. | ||
| If we can't do a budget, you shouldn't get paid. | ||
| We cannot continue to make the people of America suffer through basically the ineptitude of the Congress to work. | ||
| We've got to make it work and they have to understand they're responsible. | ||
| So people are voluntarily quitting retiring. | ||
| Chuck Schumer, basically where he is now, he's 75 years old. | ||
| He'll be 75. | ||
| And he has to decide, okay, you've been at this all your life for 50 years. | ||
| That's all you've done. | ||
| It's been a career. | ||
| Do you think enough's enough? | ||
| Who would you recommend? | ||
| What would you advise him? | ||
| Oh, I wouldn't give Chuck advice. | ||
| I would just tell him this. | ||
| Chuck, I don't think you were ever what I would call liberal or progressive to the left. | ||
| But you got moved to the left because you thought that's where your caucus was. | ||
| And I kept telling you, I said, Chuck, you keep moving left. | ||
| I told Joe Biden, you keep moving left. | ||
| It'll be your Waterloo. | ||
| It'll be the doomsday for you because you cannot go left enough to appease the people that don't have any rationale, common sense. | ||
| And that's what's happened. | ||
| So if he can bring that back to the middle, I don't know if he can. | ||
| I think there's some people basically can work in the middle and we'll see what happens. | ||
| But unless you're going to be talking, he and John Thune should be talking daily. | ||
| They should be having coffee or lunch or something. | ||
| That doesn't happen. | ||
| I can only talk about the Senate. | ||
| I can't tell you what happens in the House. | ||
| But I can tell you, I did not see any type of camaraderie between the leaders who should be locked up of knowing where they agree, where they disagree, how they can get over their differences, or just move on so they don't tie the Senate up so we can get our job done. | ||
| I don't see that conversation going on anywhere right now, and it hasn't for quite some time. | ||
| So Chuck's got to make a decision. | ||
| Does he want to stay there and fight? | ||
| He might think he has security within the Senate caucus, his caucus, who likes him. | ||
| And Chuck has good personality. | ||
| You can sit down and work with him, talk with him, argue with him, and good camaraderie back and forth. | ||
| The bottom line is you've got to get something done. | ||
| You can't try to protect everybody. | ||
| And Kevin will talk about this too. | ||
| Kevin wants to put something on the floor, or we want to put something on the floor in the Senate. | ||
| And then the leadership, everybody comes and says, hey, wait a minute, I'm up in cycle this year. | ||
| Now, the Senate House is in cycle every two years. | ||
| But the Senate will start saying, we've got 30 guys, we've got 15 Democrats in cycle. | ||
| You can't bring that hot item up because we'll have to vote on something. | ||
| It'll be very hard for us. | ||
| They'll use it against us in our state. | ||
| Well, gentlemen, as we talk, we have to make tough votes. | ||
| We are in an election year, officially. | ||
| We are in the midterm year. | ||
| And the president is not on the ballot. | ||
| He blames some of the election challenges for Republicans in 2025 on the fact that he wasn't on the ballot. | ||
| And his team was trying to figure out how to rally some of his voters to come out in 2026. | ||
| A new NBC News decision poll indicates that the president's approval ratings continue to decline. | ||
| The poll found 42 percent approve of Trump's job performance, which is down from 45 percent in April. | ||
| It also found a dip in strong support for Trump. | ||
| One of the most interesting parts of this was the MAGA Republican support. | ||
| It's higher among those who consider themselves MAGA Republicans, but it's at 70% now. | ||
| It's an 8% drop from April among MAGA Republicans. | ||
| Mr. McCarthy, do you think this polling should concern the White House at all? | ||
| Do you think it's impacting the president or his team at all? | ||
| The first thing is when you do a polling, you only read a Republican side. | ||
| Do you know Republicans are more popular than Democrats? | ||
| The Democrats are at the lowest point they've ever been. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| So when you go to an election, you're going to have another side to it. | ||
| Now, the one thing you have to understand, if you take this from a poli-side point of view, whoever has the White House on an off-year election, they usually lose seats historically. | ||
| Only two times in modern history. | ||
| He wants to change that history. | ||
| He wants to change that. | ||
| And if you would have looked at the president and you would have talked about President Trump a year and a half ago, two years ago, you would have read me a poll like that and said he had no chance of winning. | ||
| There's so many shows that he does that President Trump's not only going to win the primary, he's going to win the presidency. | ||
| You could have taken that poll and read it to me six months before the election. | ||
| You would have asked me the exact same question. | ||
| But President Trump not only won, he carried every swing state. | ||
| And he did something that's very unusual for Republicans. | ||
| He won the popular vote. | ||
| Now, what you want to measure, though, is of the 70, of the last 70 Senate seats that were held in a presidential year, 69 of those 70 seats followed exactly how they voted for president. | ||
| They voted for their Senate. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| But President Trump won Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Michigan, but the Republicans lost them. | ||
| The President Trump, four years prior when he didn't win the election, how many Republican incumbents in Congress lost? | ||
| Zero, right? | ||
| This is the first time that's happened since 1994. | ||
| We beat 13 Democrats. | ||
| Now President Trump wins, but he also wins the popular vote. | ||
| So how many more seats do they carry in the House? | ||
| They didn't. | ||
| They lost seats. | ||
| So what it shows you is President Trump really performs well. | ||
| So as a Republican leader, I would be concerned, because if he's not on the ticket, a lot of people want to turn out to help him and his agenda. | ||
| So what you want is President Trump out there campaigning. | ||
| Because he also brought, which the Democrats should be very afraid about, Hispanic population joined President Trump. | ||
| And they voted for him because economics, the border. | ||
| But you saw Republicans in the 2025 elections, especially in November in New Jersey and Virginia, of course, blue states, but the Hispanic vote did trend way more to Democrats. | ||
| So if I'm sitting as a Republican leader in the House, I'm going to take this as a wake-up call. | ||
| Because if you look at New Jersey and Virginia governors races, those are always also early indicators because they're off-year elections. | ||
| If a Republican normally wins one of those, Republicans flip the House. | ||
| If Democrats win both, it's advantage Democrats. | ||
| Now, that's all being said when we used to have 60 competitive seats. | ||
| In 2010, when we won, we beat 63 Democrats. | ||
| There's less than 25 competitive seats today, and who knows what else happens in this redistricting. | ||
| Mr. Manchin, let me bring you in here quickly because I heard you chirp a little bit when we were talking about when we were talking about Democrats and their approval ratings. | ||
| Yes, Mr. McCarthy is right. | ||
| People are not loving the Democratic Party right now. | ||
| What do Dems need to do here? | ||
| What are they up against? | ||
| Well, the American people are saying, who do we like least? | ||
| We don't like either one, but who do we like least? | ||
| That's what they've said. | ||
| And Republicans are better. | ||
| They like them. | ||
| They like the Democrats least than they do the Republicans. | ||
| They're not pleased with either one. | ||
| We're going to have to get back to governing. | ||
| And the president's going to have to get back. | ||
| Calm it down, Mr. President, a little bit. | ||
| We need a leadership. | ||
| We need you as a voice that wants to unite. | ||
| He's not giving us that voice. | ||
| So we like, and I like a lot of the things that he's done. | ||
| I like securing the border. | ||
| I thought the Democrats were crazy on asylum at the border. | ||
| I think that's given the president a lot of cover. | ||
| Let me give you one other barometer, too. | ||
| And I don't know if Kevin will agree with me or not, but the Tennessee race, you had a special election down in Tennessee, Kevin, and the Democrats were saying, oh, we only lost by nine points. | ||
| If they would have had a centrist, moderate Democrat such as Abigail Spanberger or Mikey Sherrill, they could have won that race there. | ||
| That was a winnable race for Democrats, but they can't get out of their own way. | ||
| They went with a real far-progressive person on the left. | ||
| And, you know, that's not going to work. | ||
| It's just not going to work. | ||
| And Kevin's right. | ||
| Democrats have lost more registration, people who have registered as Democrats, since the November election of 24 than the Republicans, and they've gained. | ||
| So if you think this country is going left, and if the Democrat progressives think that they're going to win from the far left, I mean the far left, they're just throwing, and Texas is a perfect example right now. | ||
| They're just kind of throwing that one up. | ||
| You know, what they have running. | ||
| The quality of the candidate matters. | ||
| Let me give you an example. | ||
| When Nancy Pelosi was elected Speaker, I was elected Republican leader. | ||
| In those four years, we turned it around and won the majority by five seats. | ||
| We were able to win five more seats in California without redrawing the lines. | ||
| We won five more in New York. | ||
| We elected the most Republican women, the most Republican minorities. | ||
| We ran in seats we hadn't won before along the border of Texas where they didn't think Republicans could. | ||
| So if you get a better candidate, better message, you can win. | ||
| So who's going to be the nominees for the Democrats? | ||
| Are they going to go the Mandani route? | ||
| Are these going to be socialist Democrats? | ||
| I mean, Joe was right about Tennessee. | ||
| It's competitive. | ||
| What you really want to look at, if you really want to follow it, don't look at the governor races. | ||
| If you look at the two governor races they won, they didn't run far-left Democrats. | ||
| They won two moderate congresswomen. | ||
| One went to the Naval Academy and one was a CIA. | ||
| Somebody you don't really see in the Democrats. | ||
| But if you look at those state races, the Democrats beat every Republican that sat in seats as incumbents. | ||
| That Kamala Harris won that district, and they won the races that Trump won up to 4.5%. | ||
| So if you extrapolate that on the current districts, you would say Democrats have a better chance of winning the majority, but only to about 220, maybe 223. | ||
| So it's total jump ball. | ||
| Republicans are in the majority. | ||
| I would do as a wake-up call. | ||
| No longer give people breaks from not being in Congress. | ||
| Don't sit there and put a bill by the day. | ||
| Put a strategy, right? | ||
| And start with the election day and work backwards. | ||
| What do you want in the voters' men? | ||
| And I think also the first thing that was Indiana, was that a surprise to you? | ||
| Was it a surprise to you about Indiana that pushing back on redistricting? | ||
| Because I think that redistricting, tit-for-tat, if you had open primaries, I think it would change everything. | ||
| You have it in California. | ||
| You all have the best system at all. | ||
| Open primaries have to get 51% to win. | ||
| So to me, that's the fairest way of having a representative form of democracy. | ||
| Yeah, but Joe, we had a good system, but a system that the people of California voted for and amended their Constitution that said you had to have an independent commission. | ||
| The most Republicans, you know where they live? | ||
| In California. | ||
| But now they vote 40% of the vote in elections. | ||
| They're going to end up with 3 to 6% of the representation in Congress. | ||
| Gentlemen, we have about 60 seconds left. | ||
| Before I let you go, there is a familiar name that is likely going to be looming over the midterm. | ||
| Zaxios is reporting that Elon Musk is diving in for the GOP. | ||
| Mr. McCarthy, is that a good idea? | ||
| Look, I think Elon, I've known him for a long time. | ||
| His focus is really about the First Amendment and others. | ||
| So when he comes in, I think he's going to be looking for people that want to find solutions. | ||
| I'll tell you what, every place else in the world, they'd love to have an Elon Musk because they can't shoot a rocket into space and catch it. | ||
| They cannot build the cars like he builds. | ||
| This is like a Thomas Edison. | ||
| I would want Elon Musk on my side no matter where I was working. | ||
| But when it comes to politics, Mr. Manchin, should Democrats be trying to get Musk on their side? | ||
| I think I have to agree with Kevin on this. | ||
| Elon has an awful lot to offer. | ||
| He's done very well. | ||
| I think the wealth gap is something you can talk about all day long. | ||
| It's just horrific what's going on in that arena. | ||
| But for his knowledge and his ability and his risk-taking and being able to see the future, it's something you'd all want on your side. | ||
| So yes, I would think Democrats, and if he's looking to try to balance this out, he'll be looking at moderate centrist Democrats and moderate centrist Republicans. | ||
| He wants the grand old party to be grand again, wants the Democratic Party to be responsible and compassionate. | ||
| We'll see where he goes with all of those. | ||
| Together, it'll work. | ||
| It'll work. | ||
| House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and former West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, thank you both so much for your time today. | ||
| Good seeing you, Kevin. | ||
| Good to see you, Joe. | ||
| Let's turn now to this week's C-SPAN flashback, where we dig deep into the video archives. | ||
| At the turn of the millennium, 25 years ago, concerns echoed all over the world about what would happen when the clock struck midnight. | ||
| The year 2000 meant computer systems would encounter a programming flaw where two-digit year codes would roll over to 0-0, potentially causing systems to read it as 1900 instead of 2000. | ||
| There were fears of potential failures in banking, power, and transport. | ||
| Here's the chair of the President's Council on Year 2000 conversion, breaking down the scare and taking a call from a concerned citizen. | ||
|
unidentified
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Years ago, when people first started using computers and information technology, some of us remember the old cards, the IBM cards, they had little holes punched in them. | |
| And that's how the computers ran. | ||
| So every hole was worth a lot of money, both in terms of space, but also in terms of processing time. | ||
| So it seemed like a logical thing to do at the time and saved a lot of money to refer to 1963 as 63. | ||
| There's a certain inertial force that kept people moving forward, thinking, well, we'll fix that down the road sometime. | ||
| So basically what it is, is when you get to the year 2000, the designation is two zeros, and the question is whether the computer will think it's 1900, 2000, or just get confused and stop. | ||
| How much the Y2K problem has been solved? | ||
| And yes, I have a comment. | ||
| Do you think that the media also has kind of blown this whole White 2K thing out of proportion? | ||
| Well, the first question of how much has been solved. | ||
| We think for the basic infrastructure we all depend upon, power, banking, finance, telecommunications, oil, gas, air traffic, that, you know, well over 99% of the problem has been solved. | ||
| All of those industries have done all the work they know of, but they will tell you that they can't guarantee perfection that there aren't going to be some minor glitches. | ||
| We think that by and large the media has done an appropriate job of reporting on what I continue to believe is the biggest management challenge the world has had in the last 50 years. | ||
| Ultimately, the world welcomed the year 2000 without major disruptions, a big relief for the many that had been expecting the worst. | ||
| And now for a conversation about what we think will be the big geopolitical stories to watch this coming year. | ||
| We've got two foreign policy experts on hand to break it all down. | ||
| Evelyn Farkas, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia during the Obama administration. | ||
| She was also former senior advisor to the top military commander for NATO's operations in Europe. | ||
| And Lonnie Chen, former foreign policy director for the Romney presidential campaign and current Hoover Institution Fellow. | ||
| Thank you both so much for bringing your expertise to the show today. | ||
| Before we dig into what's happening now, I do want to go back to that Y2K clip. | ||
| Do you guys remember that moment and how spun up everybody was? | ||
| I mean, I can say I do remember. | ||
| I'm old enough to remember it. | ||
| And we were worried. | ||
| But then the next day came and nothing dramatic happened. | ||
| Lonnie, you survived Y2K? | ||
| I did, although I remember I had a friend who was very concerned about not being able to get access to peanut butter because of this Y2K. | ||
| He thought the supply chain for peanut butter was going to fall apart. | ||
| So he was literally hoarding dozens of bottles or however you describe them, things of peanut butter, anticipating that, you know, Y2K would, I don't know why he thought anticipating that being the end of the end. | ||
| So, you know, not only did we make it through, but I think I've got a bunch of expired peanut butter sitting somewhere. | ||
| I love that priority, the peanut butter of all things. | ||
| Let's turn to what's going on today. | ||
| I want to talk about Russia and Ukraine to start because you guys have some great expertise on it and it's, of course, become a top issue both here in the United States for the administration and for our allies over in Europe. | ||
| We saw multiple rounds of peace negotiations at the end of 2025, the U.S. serving as intermediary, and the White House has really been back and forth over how optimistic they are about a peace deal. | ||
| And even during the negotiations, Russian President Vladimir Putin continued to use threatening language, of course continued to attack Ukraine. | ||
| Take a look at this headline from The Hill. | ||
| Putin says Russia will take Ukraine by, quote, military means if talks fail. | ||
| I'm curious, Evelyn, do you think Russia is seriously at the table here? | ||
| How earnest do you think they are in these talks? | ||
|
unidentified
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No. | |
| I mean, I think right now we have a situation where Ukraine is negotiating earnestly, seriously. | ||
| They've made concessions. | ||
| I mean, they're kind of negotiating with themselves, frankly, but negotiating with the United States to try to come closer to the Russian position, which is maximalist. | ||
| The Russians haven't compromised at all. | ||
| They are not ready for compromise. | ||
| Not only that, Putin is talking about Nazis in Europe threatening his people. | ||
| He's trying to gin up support for not only the attacks that he's been conducting in Europe for the last year, but I'm worried that he's trying to gin up support in his country for some kind of small-scale war with Europe. | ||
| Because if the war comes to an end in Ukraine, he's going to have a huge problem with all of the veterans coming back and, frankly, the whole economy right now ginned up to be a war economy. | ||
| Well, Secretary of State Marko Rubio in that Vanity Affair interview seemed to indicate that he thinks Russia is potentially being insincere. | ||
| He wrote that there are offers on the table right now to basically stop this war at its current lines of contact, which includes substantial parts of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, which they've controlled since 2014. | ||
| And the Russians continue to turn it down. | ||
| And so you do start to wonder: well, maybe this guy wants the entire country. | ||
| Lonnie, I wonder what you make of that. | ||
| Well, you know, as it turns out, it's very hard to engage in a negotiation with a thug. | ||
| And, you know, Vladimir Putin has exhibited that behavior over and over again. | ||
| I think the reality is that the Ukrainians, I agree with Evelyn, have come to the table in an earnest effort to end this conflict, which has been tremendously damaging for Ukraine. | ||
| It's been tremendously damaging to Russia. | ||
| And I think both sides would certainly benefit from a halt in all of the hostilities. | ||
| But I don't get the sense that Putin's truly interested in it. | ||
| I do think there's a broader conversation about the role that our European allies will play in this going forward. | ||
| The reality is, look, if you put together all of the EU combined, they've got a GDP, they've got a population that certainly eclipses that of Russia. | ||
| It eclipses that of the United States. | ||
| And so there are some questions going forward about the sharing of responsibility between the U.S. and Europe in ending this conflict and in really advancing a sustainable peace. | ||
| But there's no question that Vladimir Putin is approaching this with a lack of sincerity, has continued to do so. | ||
| And there's no indication, Dasha, that he's going to change his posture. | ||
| Lonnie, what more do you want to see from Europe? | ||
| Well, I think some of it we have already seen. | ||
| I think they have really stepped up over the course of these last several months and exhibited a greater willingness to invest in common defense, a greater willingness to invest certainly in this effort directly to end the conflict in Russia and Ukraine. | ||
| But I think that more broadly, there is a shift going on that we've seen in the Trump administration. | ||
| We saw it in the most recent national security strategy that the administration just released, I think, a few weeks ago, which outlines, I think, a very different approach that the U.S. is taking toward many of our European allies. | ||
| And so I think that's been difficult, frankly, in my conversations with some of our friends in Europe, it's been difficult for them to accept and understand that this mindset shift that we're seeing in America is real and it's something that's going to be carried out more significantly. | ||
| So I think that we're just seeing the front edges of this mindset shift and what it means and how it's taking hold in European capitals. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, to that point, when I sat down with President Trump last year, he made very clear his posture towards Europe, and it was a significant departure from what we've seen from past administrations. | ||
| I mean, he described Europe as weak. | ||
| Some people he thought were losers. | ||
| He really felt he wanted to see a significant change in Europe, a change of its trajectory. | ||
| That national security strategy that the administration released called for cultivating resistance towards Europe's current trajectory. | ||
| Evelyn, I'm curious what has struck you when it comes to this administration's approach to our allies. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it's what you said, Dasha, and you pressed the president, like, does that mean they're not our friends anymore? | ||
| And he didn't answer that directly, but I think the Europeans, some of them, have started to reach the conclusion that the president views them as the adversary. | ||
| And I was at the Halifax Security Forum in November, and we heard high military and political officials saying quietly behind closed doors from Northern Europe, Western Europe, and of course the Canadians, we don't view you as our allies anymore. | ||
| We're going it alone. | ||
| We're not even waiting for you. | ||
| Really hostile kind of language. | ||
| I was quite surprised even one of the Scandinavians was agreeing. | ||
| He said, yes, we feel that way. | ||
| And again, for countries that we're used to dealing with rationally, of course, and also cooperatively, it was shocking to hear because we don't hear a lot of that here in the U.S. People are more polite. | ||
| I mean, Lonnie, when you think about everything that's going on in the world and you think about our adversaries and our allies, I mean, what do you think are the real consequences looking at this year ahead of a serious change in our relationship with the EU? | ||
| Well, I think that the question is how much of it is contained to our relationship with the European Union. | ||
| I mean, if you read the NSS as an example, the suggestion in there, I think, is that it is very much a focus on U.S. and Europe. | ||
| But it might cause allies in other parts of the world that we rely on and that are important to us strategically. | ||
| I'm sure we'll get to the Asia-Pacific and the Indo-Pacific in a minute. | ||
| It might cause traditional allies in places like Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia, New Zealand, who are incredibly strategically important partners. | ||
| It might cause them to question what America's commitment is to those who have stood with it. | ||
| Now, I think the European example can be isolated. | ||
| I think it can be separated. | ||
| I think that's what the administration would argue: that part of the reason why it's calling out Europe in the way it is is to shift more time, energy, and resource to some of those important Indo-Pacific relationships. | ||
| But it is a natural question that allies around the world will ask about America's posture and how America intends to approach the next several years as it navigates these geostrategic issues. | ||
| While the president's been pushing for peace in Russia and Ukraine, in the Middle East, one area where he's been escalating tensions is with Venezuela. | ||
| And I'm curious to get both of your perspectives. | ||
| I've had a lot of Republican sources, people even close to the White House, ask me what I'm hearing, like, are we going to war with Venezuela? | ||
| What is going on? | ||
| What is the actual aim here? | ||
| There's of course a controversy around the strikes on the drug boats, but there's a bigger picture question here of what exactly is the aim of this administration. | ||
| And Lonnie, I'm curious to hear what you make of this in this moment. | ||
| Well, I think you've asked the right question, which is what is the end game? | ||
| I mean, listen, Venezuela, what you have here is essentially a narco-state. | ||
| And even if you remove Maduro, the question becomes, what's left? | ||
| And what is the ultimate end game? | ||
| Now, I know the administration, with the Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, is trying to focus more on our own hemisphere. | ||
| I think there's very good reason for that. | ||
| But I think when you look at some of these regimes, and particularly the one that's involved in the current conflict in Venezuela, I think the challenge becomes what are you intending as the ultimate end game here? | ||
| What is the broader long-term strategy? | ||
| Is it really regime change? | ||
| Is it replacement? | ||
| Is it fundamentally trying to change the architecture of how the Venezuelan economy works? | ||
| Because I think that's part of the challenge as well. | ||
| So I think that there are a lot of questions that need to be answered. | ||
| And I'm not saying the administration needs to reveal its entire strategy, but I do think a little bit more of an expression of what the ultimate goals and aims here are vis-a-vis the military and kinetic activity we're seeing would be helpful in giving the American people some reassurance that we're not getting ourselves into a quagmire. | ||
| I mean, Evelyn, one thing that the president said to me pretty unequivocally is he believes Maduro's days are numbered. | ||
| And it seems from some of the actions that the administration is taking that the U.S. could be involved in shortening those days. | ||
| What would that mean? | ||
| I mean, I think, first of all, we should all want Maduro's days to be numbered. | ||
| He's a horrible leader. | ||
| You know, people have died because of his mismanagement and his corruption. | ||
| Not just the people who have taken the drugs, but the Venezuelan people whom he starved. | ||
| So we want regime change. | ||
| The question is how to go about it. | ||
| And this is where I agree 100% with what Lonnie just said. | ||
| You know, we have to, the American people deserve to know what's the objective and some rough idea of how we're getting there. | ||
| How does the military factor in all this? | ||
| Because men and women are being put in harm's way right now on those carriers and in those carrier strike groups. | ||
| So I think we need to have a strategy that's explained to the American people and certainly to Congress who holds the purse strings. | ||
| So that's really important. | ||
| We don't know exactly how you would bring about regime change by threatening with a carrier group off the coast into perpetuity. | ||
| You know, you can't make, they do have leaders who are ready to take over, including the Nobel Prize winner, Ana Kurna-Machado, who the McCain Institute also gave an award to last year. | ||
| You know, she's wonderful. | ||
| She could take over, but there's a lot more that needs to be taken under consideration. | ||
| And Lonnie, on the sort of politics of this, too, I mean, what are the risks versus rewards for this administration getting so involved here? | ||
| Well, the risks are, of course, the fracturing of the political coalition that got the president elected. | ||
| I mean, I think you have in the president's electoral coalition both people who take a more traditionally robust view of the deployment of American power around the world and those in the so-called MAGA movement who are probably a little bit more skeptical. | ||
| And I think the challenge is that if the president's unable or the president's administration is unable to articulate a little bit more of where we're going and what the end game and what the ultimate rationale is for some of the things that we have going on in that region are right now, you risk the possibility that you lose some of the political support that he's gained. | ||
| Now, I think the president's going to continue to remain in very high regard amongst those who voted for him and supported him. | ||
| But we are beginning to see in the public opinion research over the last couple weeks some degrading of support within the conservative coalition. | ||
| And I think that is ultimately a price that the president doesn't want to pay in the long run politically, certainly with a midterm election coming up later in 2026. | ||
| Let's continue our tour around the world here and turn to U.S.-China relations, specifically this trade war between the two nations. | ||
| Christopher Beam writes for Bloomberg. | ||
| As the trade disputes showed, Beijing is now in a position to make Washington blink. | ||
| Those hoping to see China humbled must resign themselves to the fact that it remains a formidable rival and is determined to expand its already substantial advantages, including future shaping sectors such as electric vehicles, clean energy, and robotics. | ||
| How is this trade war being felt in China, Lonnie? | ||
| Well, I think first of all, the most interesting development over the last year since President Trump took office a second time is the degree to which our relationship with China has really become centered on the economics as opposed to maybe other issues that past administrations have focused the relationship on. | ||
| And in that sense, we are engaged in a pretty significant economic competition with China. | ||
| And I think China is prepared to play a long game. | ||
| They always have been. | ||
| And I think that what we're finding now is that there are areas and sectors and places where we aren't as well positioned in America to compete unless we are willing to come to the table with some of these tactics that I think the president has brought to the table. | ||
| The question is in the long run, how will China shift its economy? | ||
| China's got a whole series of economic problems they've got to deal with. | ||
| How do we shift our economy? | ||
| What does it mean for American consumers in the middle of an affordability crisis? | ||
| So all of these questions, I think, are quite fundamental. | ||
| But the aperture through which we understand U.S.-China, I think in America has shifted now from one of geopolitical and perhaps military and geostrategic questions, which are still hugely important in my mind, to really an economic relationship. | ||
| And that's why the president is so eager to sit down with Xi Jinping. | ||
| He wants to reach an economic accommodation. | ||
| And for him, that is the paramount value in this relationship. | ||
| Evelyn, to Lonnie's point, the Chinese government, Xi Jinping, is thinking not just about the Trump administration, but far beyond that. | ||
| So what are the implications of the actions that the U.S. is taking now, both in the short and the long term? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I worry about what Lonnie just talked about, this focus on the economic and kind of pushing the traditional security issues to the side, because China hasn't done that. | ||
| And the reality is, and unfortunately, the national security strategy left this also out, the reality is that China is also countering us militarily in Asia Pacific and really all around the world, certainly on technology and competition, on shipbuilding. | ||
| You know, they're not building these ships to compete with anyone else but the United States. | ||
| They are countering our allies, the Philippines, and then, of course, our partner Vietnam with military force, the Chinese are. | ||
| We want open communication or channels for markets to be open for the United States, for our goods. | ||
| But we also don't want, frankly, a military conflict with China and we don't want them to dominate us somehow. | ||
| So I think we have to keep our eye on the fact that both China and Russia are working together to counter the United States, to make us weaker. | ||
| And so if we only focus on our hemisphere, we're in danger of not recognizing the true threats. | ||
| Well, one thing that the State Department recently did announce is $10 billion in arms sales to Taiwan. | ||
| It would be the largest ever U.S. weapons package to Taiwan. | ||
| Congress still needs to approve it. | ||
| The China Foreign Ministry says that the deal would violate diplomatic agreements between the U.S. and China and undermine regional stability. | ||
| But, Lonnie, what do you make of this move from the State Department? | ||
| Well, I think it's important for this administration to reaffirm the U.S.'s commitment to Taiwan. | ||
| I think that is something actually in the NSS. | ||
| You see more mentions of Taiwan than in any previous NSS. | ||
| I think that's good news in terms of bolstering this important relationship. | ||
| There's just no question, though, this is a red line for China. | ||
| It always has been, it always will be. | ||
| And to the degree that it complicates the economic conversation, and we just talked about this, I think that's an area where there is some cause for concern because unless the U.S. is willing to continue to reaffirm that support, it does leave Taiwan in a very difficult position. | ||
| And the reality is, at least from what I've seen so far, the president and the administration have been wanting to prioritize ahead of these geostrategic issues some kind of economic accommodation with China. | ||
| So I do have some nervousness about the administration, how far it's going to be willing to go in reasserting our traditional support for Taiwan. | ||
| But I think that is so critical to maintaining the status quo in the region. | ||
| I think ensuring that America stands with Taiwan and is willing, not just in actions, which are hugely important, this military transfer of assets, but also just the broader message that we're sending about Taiwan's role in the region. | ||
| I think those things have to be maintained by this administration going forward. | ||
| Yeah, Evelyn, how important is that? | ||
| Because as we're talking about all of this, it's very clear. | ||
| None of these geopolitical issues are sitting in a vacuum, right? | ||
| And what you were saying about your conversations with Europeans who were really questioning the relationship with the United States, whether the U.S. could be relied upon, I mean, how important is sending a message to Taiwan in the context of everything we've been discussing? | ||
| It's really important, Dasha, because it's important not just to Taiwan, but to the region. | ||
| The McCain Institute, we're holding our first ever, we hold a Sedona Forum, the global security conference in May every year in the beautiful desert of Sedona, Arizona. | ||
| And Senator McCain actually made a joke once when he was sanctioned by the Russians. | ||
| He said, oh, well, I guess for my summer vacation, instead of going to Siberia, I have to go to Sedona. | ||
| Well, this year we're doing one in Tokyo. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Because the Japanese, our other allies, Japanese, South Koreans, others, they're watching our diplomacy with regard to Taiwan. | ||
| They want us to show strong deterrence. | ||
| We want to prevent war, but the only way to prevent war is to show that we can fight and win, frankly. | ||
| And so the Japanese are worried. | ||
| They want us to show that we care, that we can help, you know, we will continue the alliance. | ||
| And that is, of course, they're also watching what's happening with regard to Taiwan, and the Taiwanese are watching what's happening in Ukraine. | ||
| It's all interconnected, as you said. | ||
| Well, and our last stop on the world tour is the Middle East. | ||
| Of course, one of the big developments this year is the ceasefire in Gaza. | ||
| The conflict has been out of the headlines for the last few months, but that does not mean that the significance and the future of that region is out of the minds of a lot of people working on this. | ||
| So I'm curious, where do you all see things heading from here? | ||
| What I've been hearing is phase one done good. | ||
| Phase two, getting that international stabilization force in place, actually securing long-lasting peace and figuring out what the future of Gaza actually looks like. | ||
| That is a pretty significant uphill climb. | ||
| Lonnie? | ||
| Well, it is an uphill climb. | ||
| It's a region that's been embroiled in some form of conflict for millennia. | ||
| So it's difficult to sort of wave a wand. | ||
| And even though I think the president's orientation toward peace has been a good and welcome one, the reality is it is a very difficult region to operate in. | ||
| I think some of these more regional agreements, for example, we saw in late December a deal between Israel and Egypt on energy, perhaps signaling that the two countries might be willing to come together at some point. | ||
| Some of these regional agreements between Israel and players in the region that have resources and that have geostrategic sway, I think that ultimately is going to be an important piece of the puzzle in terms of making sure that the peace that was negotiated in the wake of the awful 10-7 attacks and the war that followed, that that peace can be a lasting one. | ||
| It is going to depend ultimately on strong regional partnerships so that Israel feels reinforced in the region and frankly that we can continue to express what should be an ironclad agreement and an ironclad association with our friends in Israel. | ||
| Evelyn, in the Middle East, what do you see as cause for optimism this year and what do you see as cause for concern? | ||
| Okay, I'll start with the concern because I'm really worried about Israel. | ||
| I'm really worried about the situation in Gaza. | ||
| The security force that they are supposed to be establishing, they're not getting the right number of countries offering troops. | ||
| We have a couple of countries that sounded like they would offer troops, but they need more. | ||
| And that's the first step because you have to disarm Hamas and you have to allow the IDF to withdraw. | ||
| You can't do that without a security force. | ||
| So I'm really worried because at the same time we have the problem in the West Bank where there's been radical settlers, there's been violence pushing out the Palestinians against international law. | ||
| And all of that puts into jeopardy the entire security of Israel. | ||
| You know, the only way Israel is going to be secure is if the Palestinians have their own state, and that whole process is in jeopardy right now. | ||
| So I am really worried about that. | ||
| Cause for optimism, I guess, is the fact that the Gulf states are engaged. | ||
| You know, President Trump has engaged them diplomatically, whether you agree with how he's done it and all the ancillary benefits to his family, which people criticize. | ||
| At the end of the day, he's got them engaged. | ||
| They're putting their effort in. | ||
| We need more effort on the security front. | ||
| And, of course, the normalization with Israel will continue if we can also help the Palestinian people, because, of course, for Saudi Arabia, that's important. | ||
| All right. | ||
| That is all the time we have for our world tour with Evelyn and Lonnie. | ||
| Guys, thank you so much for breaking this all down. | ||
| Evelyn Farkas of the McCain Institute and Lonnie Chen of the Hoover Institute. | ||
| Appreciate you both. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| Thanks, Tasha. | ||
| We'll close this week's program with our ceasefire moment of the week, highlighting what's possible when politicians come together as Americans, not just partisans. | ||
| New Jersey Democratic Senator Andy Kim made his maiden speech on the Senate floor recently, giving those around him a sense of the goals he wishes to accomplish. | ||
| Kim was then commended by Mississippi Republican Senator Roger Wicker. | ||
| Take a look. | ||
|
unidentified
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This is my maiden speech. | |
| And one day I will stand here again to give my farewell speech. | ||
| And the duration between these two speeches will, I hope, not be measured in years, but instead by the problems I sought to tackle and solve. | ||
| That in between these speeches, I hope we meet the urgency and lead our nation forward with strategy and purpose. | ||
| I've often said that we work in what's arguably the most reactionary building in America, reacting to the headlines, the social posts. | ||
| But it doesn't have to be this way. | ||
| Instead, we can be a Senate that sets out real goals and builds a strategy to meet them. | ||
| Where do we want our nation to be in 10, 20, 30 years from now? | ||
| I want to be a part of that Senate. | ||
| Mr. President, I also Rise to commend my new colleague of less than a year on his maiden speech. | ||
| Having watched him, having listened to him, having attended Senate prayer breakfasts with Andy Kim over the past few months, I know that he's someone whose heart is good and who will work with every senator and every member of the House to advance this nation. | ||
| Senators expressing bipartisan optimism for the future. | ||
| We love to see it. | ||
| That's all the time we have for this episode. | ||
| A reminder: Ceasefire is also available as a podcast. | ||
| Find us in all the usual places. | ||
| I'm Dasha Burns. | ||
| And remember, whether or not you agree, keep talking and keep listening. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Coming up, our day-long marathon of the key speeches from 2025 continues. | |
| We begin with former President Joe Biden's farewell address at the end of his term, then President Donald Trump's first speech as commander-in-chief. | ||
| After that, House leaders from both parties speaking on the first day of the 119th Congress. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy. | ||
| From Washington and across the country. | ||
| Coming up Saturday morning, former Congressional Management Foundation CEO Brad Fitch talks about the second edition of his Citizens Handbook for influencing elected officials. | ||
| Then journalist, podcast host, and founder of Meet the Future, Kevin Cirilli, will talk about the future of AI and tech trends to watch in the year ahead. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal. | ||
| Join in the conversation live at 7 Eastern Saturday morning on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| You're watching C-SPAN's year-end marathon of some key speeches from 2025. | ||
| Coming up, former President Joe Biden's farewell address to the nation before the end of his term. | ||
| He talked about the work of his administration, including recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, infrastructure modernization, and progress on lowering prescription drug prices. | ||
| President Biden also warned about the risks posed by concentrated wealth and power, as well as unregulated technology. | ||
| The former president delivered his 17-minute speech from the Oval Office. | ||
| My fellow Americans, I'm speaking to you tonight from the Oval Office. | ||
| Before I begin, let me speak to important news from earlier today. | ||
| After eight months of non-stop negotiation, my administration, by my administration, a ceasefire and a hostage deal has been reached by Israel and Hamas, |