| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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Democracy in Real Time
00:03:32
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unidentified
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and online at C-SPAN.org. | |
| Democracy. | ||
| It isn't just an idea. | ||
| It's a process. | ||
| A process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles. | ||
| It's where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation's course is charted. | ||
| Democracy in real time. | ||
| This is your government at work. | ||
| This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered. | ||
| On Saturday, we'll have live coverage of the inauguration of Virginia Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger, along with Lieutenant Governor-elect Ghazala Hashmi and Attorney General ElectJ Jones. | ||
| From Richmond, Virginia, watch live at 12 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app and online at c-span.org. | ||
| Book TV, every Sunday on C-SPAN 2, features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. | ||
| Here's a look at what's coming up this weekend. | ||
| At noon Eastern, Mary Roach, author of Replaceable You, looks at advancements in repairing and replacing parts of our bodies. | ||
| Then at 7 p.m. Eastern on America's Book Club, Baseball Hall of Famer Cal Ripken Jr. joins David Rubenstein to discuss his legendary career, his work as a best-selling author, and gives viewers a tour of memorabilia from his decades in baseball. | ||
| At 8.15 p.m. Eastern, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Rick Atkinson, author of trilogies on the American Revolution and World War II, gives a tour of his home office and talks about his research process. | ||
| And at 10.15 p.m. Eastern, Reginald Dwayne Betts talks about the impact that Dr. King's letter from Birmingham Jail had on him when he read it in prison and the life he's led since getting out, including founding Freedom Reads, an organization that builds libraries and prisons. | ||
| Watch Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org. | ||
| Joining us from Capitol Hill to talk about issues concerning Congress in the White House, Representative Eric Sorensen, Democrat of Illinois, a member of the Armed Services Committee. | ||
| Good morning to you, sir. | ||
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unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Good to be with you. | ||
| When it comes to the president's recent statements about the U.S. interest in Greenland, what do you make of the case that the U.S. is making for this? | ||
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unidentified
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Well, look, you know, I am proud to have Danish heritage. | |
| You know, I'm the only Sorensen here, and I share the same last name as the Danish ambassador to the United States. | ||
| We talk regularly about this, but let's also understand what this administration is trying to do. | ||
| We've got an, I sit on the Armed Services Committee, we have enough defense. | ||
| We've been working with NATO. | ||
| We've been working with Denmark. | ||
| They have provided us the land use that we need in Greenland. | ||
| There is no reason why we would need to have Greenland. | ||
| And also, when you look at our defense against Russia across the Arctic Circle, we have Alaska. | ||
| We have our state that is right up there, which actually goes north of the area that is inhabited in Greenland. | ||
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Boosting American Refunds and Savings
00:04:03
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unidentified
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So it is just preposterous. | |
| It is another shiny object that this administration is putting in front of the American people so that we lose sight of what's really important. | ||
| I want to play a little bit about the president. | ||
| He was in the White House yesterday in the Oval Office, specifically mentioning Greenland, his interest. | ||
| Play a little bit of that and get your response. | ||
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unidentified
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Important for the national security including. | |
| We're going to leave this to take you live to the White House where Press Secretary Caroline Levitt is holding a briefing. | ||
| You're watching live coverage. | ||
| Good afternoon, everybody. | ||
| A packed room today. | ||
| Thank you all for coming. | ||
| President Trump is making America affordable again through his proven economic formula of powerful tariffs, fair trade deals, massive middle-class tax cuts, energy dominance, and aggressive deregulation. | ||
| The overwhelmingly positive economic data released this week underscores the significant progress the president has already delivered. | ||
| Tuesday's CPI report marked the latest confirmation that President Trump has defeated Joe Biden's inflation crisis. | ||
| Since President Trump took office, core CPI has increased at just a 2.4% annualized rate, substantially lower than the 3.3% annual rate inherited from the Biden administration last January. | ||
| Importantly, as inflation cools, Americans' wages are rising, giving the American people more purchasing power. | ||
| And with what is likely recorded, or likely going to be a record-breaking tax refund season in the next couple of weeks, the American people will be reaping the rewards of the massive tax cuts that were signed into law by the president. | ||
| Thanks to President Trump's signing of no tax on tips, overtime, social security, boosting the child tax credit, and locking in the 2017 Trump tax cuts, independent estimates project the average American tax filer could expect up to an extra $1,000 bump to their tax refund next year. | ||
| This is going to be a helpful boost to working families who are making ends meet. | ||
| On the energy front, the national average price for a gallon of regular gas this week fell to its lowest level in five years, thanks to President Trump's Drill Baby Drill agenda. | ||
| According to GasBuddy, the average price for regular gas on Monday was below $3 per gallon in 43 states, below $275 per gallon in 30 states, and at or below $250 per gallon in 17 states. | ||
| In fact, gas prices were below $2 a gallon at stations in at least 19 states. | ||
| Don't forget this was unheard of just a couple of short years ago. | ||
| Overall, drivers are projected to spend $11 billion less at the gas pump this year than they did last year, resulting in hundreds of dollars in critical savings for the average American family. | ||
| We're also seeing the housing market rebound as borrowing costs ease and income growth outpaces home price gains. | ||
| According to a new report also released this week from the National Association of Realtors, existing home sales in December rose to their fastest pace in three years. | ||
| To further improve housing affordability, President Trump has recently announced and directed Fannie and Freddie to purchase $200 billion worth of mortgage bonds. | ||
| As a result of these actions, mortgage rates have fallen to their lowest level in years. | ||
| As of last Friday, rates for the average 30-year mortgage are down more than one full percentage point. | ||
| Because of these significant declines, monthly housing payments are now at their lowest level in two years, and we expect this decrease to continue. | ||
| As someone who was enormously successful in real estate, President Trump understands that owning a home is about more than just having a physical asset. | ||
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Empowering American Owners
00:03:09
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| It's about empowering young people to stake their claim in the American dream. | ||
| It's about giving newlyweds a place to make their own and start a family. | ||
| It's about promoting the spirit of hard work, determination, and yes, the rugged individualism that has made America the greatest country in the history of the world. | ||
| President Trump knows America is strongest when it's a nation of owners, not renters, and he is determined to unlock that opportunity for as many Americans as possible. | ||
| That's why he will outline additional housing initiatives during his major speech in Davos next week, and we look forward to seeing many of you there. | ||
| Finally, this morning, President Trump unveiled a health care plan for America called the Great Health Care Plan and a video message detailing his solutions to lower costs for all Americans and significantly improve our health care system. | ||
| The Great Health Care Plan will accomplish this through four common sense pillars. | ||
| Number one, permanently lowering prescription drug prices. | ||
| Congress can get this done by codifying President Trump's historic most favored nation initiatives into law to guarantee Americans the same low prices for prescription drugs that people in other countries around the world pay. | ||
| Additionally, by increasing consumer choice by making more verified, safe pharmaceutical drugs available for over-the-counter purchases. | ||
| Number two, the Great Health Care Plan will stop sending big insurance companies billions in extra taxpayer-funded subsidy payments and instead send that money directly to eligible Americans to allow them to buy the health insurance of their choice. | ||
| Additionally, by funding a cost-sharing reduction program for health care plans and ending kickbacks from pharmacy benefit managers to large brokerage middlemen. | ||
| Number three, the Great Health Care Plan will maximize price transparency by requiring any health care provider or insurer who accepts either Medicare or Medicaid to publicly and prominently post their pricing and fees to avoid surprise medical bills. | ||
| This is an incredibly popular policy that has been bipartisan for many years and President Trump is officially and firmly calling on Congress to get it done. | ||
| And number four, holds big insurance companies accountable by requiring them to publish rate and coverage comparisons up front on their websites in plain English so consumers and everyday Americans can make the best purchasing decisions for them and their families. | ||
| These are common sense actions that make up President Trump's great health care plan and they represent the most comprehensive and bold agenda to lower health care costs to have ever been considered by the federal government. | ||
| Congress should immediately take up President Trump's plan and pass it into law. | ||
| For Americans watching at home, you can visit greathealthcare.gov right now for more information on the Great Health Care Plan. | ||
|
Local Classified Rights
00:15:27
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| And with that, we will open it up to questions. | ||
| In our new media seat today, we have a familiar face, Riley Gaines. | ||
| I'm surprised it took us a year to get you here, but I'm very happy to see you. | ||
| I know you have a new podcast, The Riley Gaines Show. | ||
| And so thank you. | ||
| And you brought a beautiful baby and your lovely husband too. | ||
| So thank you so much for joining. | ||
| And why don't you kick us off? | ||
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unidentified
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Absolutely. | |
| Well, thank you. | ||
| First and foremost, congratulations to you. | ||
| Being a girl mom will change your life in the best way possible. | ||
| So excited to get to shop all the pink and the curly and the bows. | ||
| I was in Washington, D.C. earlier this week for the Supreme Court case. | ||
| There were two arguments that were heard surrounding sex-based rights and if it's constitutional for states to pass laws that ultimately protect those rights for women. | ||
| If the Supreme Court rules as anticipated in favor of maintaining these sex-based rights, is the administration prepared to take action against the states, I believe at this point it's 23 states that don't have those protections for women? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| And as you know, Riley, the administration already has done so. | ||
| We've taken action in a number of fronts against these states who are failing to uphold the president's executive orders in this administration's policy of simply protecting women in women's sports and in women's private spaces. | ||
| We've gone to the mat with large universities in this country as well to try to fight for what's fair and what's just for women and girls across the country. | ||
| So I know you were at the arguments. | ||
| I listened to them myself as a woman and as a former athlete and I think the president speaks on common sense on this issue that women's sports and private spaces should be protected and that there are two genders, there are two sexes. | ||
| That is not something we should be afraid to say in this country. | ||
| And I think, frankly, it was quite alarming to not only hear a couple of justices gravel over that basic fundamental biological fact that men and women are different but inherently equal, but we are certainly different and women deserve such rights. | ||
| We hope and expect that the Supreme Court will rule in the right way on this matter. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
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unidentified
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Gabe. | |
| Caroline, thank you very much. | ||
| A lot to talk about. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| What can isn't there always a lot to talk about? | ||
| There is a lot to talk about. | ||
| What can you share about the President's meeting with Maria Caria Machado? | ||
| Is it underway? | ||
| What can you share about that? | ||
| And then also, the President said yesterday that Del C. Rodriguez was, quote, a terrific person. | ||
| Does the president trust the remaining members of the Maduro regime? | ||
| I will say, to your first question, the meeting was about to begin as I was stepping out of the Oval Office moments ago, so my understanding is that it's underway right now. | ||
| I know the President was looking forward to this meeting, and he was expecting it to be a good and positive discussion with Ms. Machado, who is really a remarkable and brave voice for many of the people of Venezuela. | ||
| So the President looks forward to obviously talking to her about the realities on the ground in the country and what is taking place. | ||
| As for Ms. Rodriguez, the President did speak with her directly this week. | ||
| As you know, he revealed that to all of you yesterday. | ||
| And Secretary Rubio and the administration have been in constant communication with Ms. Rodriguez and other members of the interim government in Venezuela. | ||
| They have been extremely cooperative. | ||
| They have thus far met all of the demands and requests of the United States and of the President. | ||
| And I think you have all seen that play out. | ||
| We obviously had a $500 million energy jail that was struck in large part because of the cooperation from Ms. Rodriguez. | ||
| Venezuela and Ms. Rodriguez have also confirmed that they will be releasing political prisoners from Venezuela. | ||
| There were five Americans who were recently released this week as well. | ||
| So the President likes what he's seeing and will expect that cooperation to continue. | ||
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unidentified
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Regarding the investigation into the leak that the President referenced yesterday, what is the administration's position on the Washington Post reporter? | |
| The Post has reported that she was told that she's not a target of the investigation. | ||
| Does the administration believe she did anything wrong? | ||
| And then also, what is the administration's position on the Pentagon Papers case from the 1970s that affirmed reporters' right to publish classified information under certain circumstances? | ||
| Well, since this is an active investigation, I don't want to comment on it much more than what we did yesterday to obviously confirm the investigation. | ||
| And I can confirm what the Attorney General stated and the President as well, which is that the individual, unfortunately, a contractor at the Pentagon, chose to unlawfully leak classified and very serious information to this Washington Post reporter, hence why the reporter's home was looked into by the FBI, rightfully so. | ||
| And the administration is not going to tolerate leaks, especially from within the national security apparatus of the United States government, that put our nation's integrity and our national security at risk. | ||
| Full stop. | ||
| The president will not support that. | ||
| I know the Secretary of War will not support that, and it will not stand. | ||
| And legal action will be taken against anyone, whether it's a member of the press or whether it's an employee for a federal agency, who breaks the law. | ||
| If you break the law and if you endanger our men and women in uniform, you are going to be held accountable, period, full stop. | ||
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unidentified
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Does this administration believe that this reporter or any reporter has a right to publish classified information under certain circumstances? | |
| Look, I think that we do not believe that individuals who have been given the privilege of holding a top-secret clearance should be illegally leaking that classified information. | ||
| And I know the American people agree with that. | ||
| And I think it's a basic tenet of journalistic integrity not to publish information that could directly endanger the operational security or the brave men and women who are serving this country in uniform and putting themselves in harm's way to protect not just the people of this administration, but all of you in the press and all of their fellow Americans as well. | ||
| Jackie. | ||
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unidentified
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Thank you, Caroline. | |
| I wanted to get the White House reaction to Iranian state TV broadcasting an implicit threat to the president's life. | ||
| It was images of the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, according to reports, with the message, this time it will not go wrong. | ||
| I have not seen that, to be honest with you, Jackie. | ||
| We'll take a look and I'll let the president and his national security team examine that footage to ensure its legitimacy. | ||
| Again, I haven't seen it, so I can't comment on it. | ||
| What I will say with respect to Iran is that the president and his team have communicated to the Iranian regime that if the killing continues, there will be grave consequences. | ||
| And the president received a message as he revealed to all of you in the whole world yesterday that the killing and the executions will stop. | ||
| And the president understands today that 800 executions that were scheduled and supposed to take place yesterday were halted. | ||
| And so the president and his team are closely monitoring this situation and all options remain on the table for the president. | ||
| It's true that the president spoke with Prime Minister Netanyahu, but I would never detail details about their conversation without giving the expressed approval by the president himself. | ||
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unidentified
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Thank you, Caroline. | |
| Is it still the president's assessment that it would be very hard for Ms. Machado to leave Venezuela because he says she lacks the respect and support in that country? | ||
| And will he raise that with her today? | ||
| I think the president's assessment that you just pointed out was based on realities on the ground. | ||
| It was a realistic assessment based on what the president was reading and hearing from his advisors and national security team. | ||
| And at this moment in time, his opinion on that matter has not changed. | ||
|
unidentified
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The Pressure has also said that he would like there to be elections in Venezuela when the time is right. | |
| Do you have any update on when that might be? | ||
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unidentified
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And is he committed to a transition to democracy for Venezuela? | |
| Yes, and he is also committed to hopefully seeing elections in Venezuela one day, but I don't have an updated timetable for you today. | ||
| Reagan in the back. | ||
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unidentified
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Thanks, Carolyn. | |
| I have a question for you on Minnesota and then also Venezuela. | ||
|
unidentified
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Sure. | |
| President Trump threatened invoking the Insurrection Act today in the Truth Social Post. | ||
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unidentified
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I'm wondering what his tipping point is. | |
| Like what would it take for him to invoke the Insurrection Act? | ||
| Look, that's only a question, frankly, Reagan, the President can answer. | ||
| But the Insurrection Act is a tool at the President's disposal. | ||
| As you know, it has been used sparingly, but it has been used by previous presidents in American history. | ||
| And I think the President's Truth Social Post spoke very loud and clear to Democrats across this country, elected officials who are using their platforms to encourage violence against federal law enforcement officers who are encouraging left-wing agitators to unlawfully obstruct legitimate law enforcement operations. | ||
| And if you talk to any law enforcement officer, no matter what level they work at, they want to be working with their counterparts, whether that's at the federal level or the federal authorities wanting to work with their counterparts at the state and local level. | ||
| And it's truly shameful that now for more than a year, you've had elected Democrat governors and mayors who have basically held their state and local law enforcement hostage and told them you cannot cooperate with federal law enforcement. | ||
| Why? | ||
| They cooperated under the Biden administration. | ||
| It's because these Democrats are deranged in their hatred for President Trump and they are holding their state and local law enforcement hostage as a result. | ||
| And these Democrat mayors and governors are doing this over what? | ||
| Over the lawful and legitimate law enforcement operations to remove violent criminals from the streets of Minnesota, from the streets of California, from the streets of New York, and from the streets of every state across this country. | ||
| And you don't see these riots and this vandalism taking place in states like Florida. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Because you have a governor in that state who has empowered federal and local authorities to work together. | ||
| And it's despicable what we're seeing from these Democrat politicians, especially in sanctuary states and cities across the country. | ||
|
unidentified
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Go ahead. | |
| John. | ||
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unidentified
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Thank you so much. | |
| My question is, President Trump has talked twice in recent days, once at the Kennedy Center and then to Reuters again last night about canceling the election. | ||
| Why is he talking about this? | ||
| I believe you're referring to the president's interview at Reuters last night. | ||
| I was in that interview. | ||
| It was a closed-door interview. | ||
| Obviously, there was not audio or video. | ||
| The president was simply joking. | ||
| He was saying, we're doing such a great job. | ||
| We're doing everything the American people thought. | ||
| Maybe we should just keep rolling. | ||
| But he was speaking facetiously. | ||
| And then one more on the labor secretary. | ||
| She's under investigation. | ||
| Has he spoken to her about this? | ||
| I don't know if the president has spoken directly to the secretary. | ||
| If they have, I'm unfamiliar with that conversation. | ||
| But I have spoken to the president about that report regarding the secretary. | ||
| He's aware of the internal investigation and he stands by the secretary and he thinks that she's doing a tremendous job at the Department of Labor on behalf of American workers. | ||
| PBS, go ahead. | ||
| You were mentioning a minute ago about working federal, state, local officials in Minneapolis. | ||
| Governor Walls' office is saying today that he's trying to get a hold directly with the president. | ||
| Have they spoken? | ||
| And if they haven't, why haven't they spoken if there's a desire from Walls if they're saying to de-escalate what's happening there? | ||
| I'm not sure if that's a genuine offer to speak with the president. | ||
| I was with the president about 30 minutes ago and they hadn't spoken at that point. | ||
| Look, the president is always willing to answer the phone when people pick up and call. | ||
| When there was another tragic shooting many months ago in Governor Walls' state, he spoke directly with the governor. | ||
| But I would ask that the governor stops inciting the harassment and illegal obstruction of law enforcement in his state. | ||
| All ICE and federal law enforcement are trying to do are remove people like this off of the streets of Governor Wallace's city in Minneapolis and of his state in Minnesota. | ||
| If you look at some of the individuals in this photo, these are all illegal alien criminals who came into our country under the previous administration. | ||
| This is some of the most disturbing crimes you will ever read about. | ||
| And there's only a few reporters in this room who will actually talk about these individuals. | ||
| This is all ICE is trying to do. | ||
| They are trying to remove people like this from Governor Wallace's state. | ||
| And so yes, he should pick up the phone and he should say that he will cooperate with this president and with the federal government in making Minnesota safer because that's all President Trump and his administration want to do. | ||
| Mary. | ||
| Thanks, Gary. | ||
|
unidentified
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The president says he wants money to go directly to Americans so they can buy their own insurance. | |
| How exactly would this work? | ||
| And can the president assure Americans that this will be enough to cover their health care costs? | ||
| So this is the second principle in the president's health care plan, lowering insurance premiums specifically and ensuring that that money is going directly back to the American people and cutting the kickbacks that then raise those premiums. | ||
| So this plan, once put into legislative text and passed by Congress and sent to the president's desk, will stop sending big insurance companies billions of extra taxpayer-funded subsidy payments and instead send that money directly to eligible Americans to allow them to buy the health insurance of their choice through you may have heard it be referred to as health savings accounts. | ||
| Whether that ends up being the actual name of such accounts, we'll have to see. | ||
| Again, Congress and the White House are going to work together to put this plan into action. | ||
| And then secondly, the Great Health Care Plan will fund a cost-sharing reduction program for health care plans, which will save taxpayers at least $36 billion and reduce the most common Obamacare plan premiums by over 10%. | ||
| And that's according to the Congressional Budget Office. | ||
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unidentified
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20 million Americans in recent weeks have seen their health care costs soar. | |
| Can he assure them that if this plan is put in place, that they will be able to cover those costs? | ||
| If this plan is put in place, every single American who has health care in the United States. | ||
| States will see lower costs as a result. | ||
| They will see more transparency. | ||
| All of these proposals that are within the Great Health Care Plan are incredibly popular with the American people and they will impact everyone, not just a small fraction of those who are within the health care marketplace, but every single American will continue to see their costs go down. | ||
| And I will note that they already are with respect to prescription drug prices. | ||
| We look at what the president has done with most favored nations. | ||
| You've seen these big pharmaceutical companies in the Oval Office saying that this president and his team were non-stop around the clock pressuring us and negotiating with us to lower the cost of prescription drugs for Americans. | ||
| And we are already seeing that to the tune in some cases of more than 500%. | ||
| And that TrumpRX website is something that the administration will be formally launching very soon so Americans will have access to those lower costs of drugs. | ||
|
unidentified
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Josh. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| The president has called on credit card companies to lower cap rates to 10% effective 20th next week. | ||
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unidentified
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If they don't do that, what's his threat? | |
| Tariffs? | ||
| No, I'm just kidding. | ||
| The president certainly has an expectation, Josh, that the credit card companies will do this, just as he did with the pharmaceutical companies, that they will lower costs for American consumers. | ||
|
ICE Agent Controversies
00:12:32
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| I don't have a specific consequence to outline for you, but certainly this is an expectation and frankly, a demand that the president has made. | ||
| Can you give us an update on the Fed? | ||
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unidentified
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Sorry. | |
| There was some reporting from, I think, Fox Business that Rick Reeder had an interview this week scheduled. | ||
| The president's indicated he's already made a selection, or at least some kind of settling on someone. | ||
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unidentified
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Where is he in that process and when can we expect an announcement? | |
| Is he still doing interviews? | ||
| Look, the president is in the same place as you all have been asking about this for many, many weeks. | ||
| He's in a decision-making phase. | ||
| There are a few people who he likes very much for this job, maybe less than that. | ||
| The truth is, like with all decisions, it's a decision for the president to make. | ||
| And he said to Reuters in that interview last night that he thinks he'll be finally making that decision in the next couple of weeks. | ||
| So we will see. | ||
|
unidentified
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Very quickly, there's been some criticism from other governments about ROC and XAI, the Twitter AI bot and things it's been doing to manipulate images, including whether that would violate the Take It Down Act that the First Lady just supported. | |
| We've not heard from this administration on it. | ||
| Elon Musk says that they've disabled that, but I wanted to ask you whether the administration has a position and whether that's something that you will be pursuing or whether the president has talked to Mr. Musk about that. | ||
| Yes, I will talk to the Office of Science and Technology and we will get you a firm statement and answer on exactly where the administration stands. | ||
| I don't want to speak on that without speaking with the experts on it. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| Just to follow up on the health care plan, one of the things in the Affordable Care Act was coverage of pre-existing conditions. | ||
| Is there any discussion or inclusion on that issue in the president's report? | ||
| The president's plan that he outlined today will have no impact on individuals in this country with pre-existing conditions. | ||
| Obviously, that's a continued conversation that the White House will have with Congress, but that's not the President's intention with the Great Health Care Plan. | ||
|
unidentified
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Go ahead. | |
| Thanks, Caroline. | ||
| Two questions on Minneapolis. | ||
| And then I got headings. | ||
| Two questions on Minneapolis. | ||
| One on the ICE agent, the other on the rioting. | ||
| I believe last night there were protesters or rioters that rifled through an FBI car, took weapons. | ||
| We had a reporter in bedded with ICE who said that she saw constant harassment all evening. | ||
| Can you speak to the rhetoric we're hearing from Democrat politicians, whether they are causing violence against ICE, as well as some of the headlines we've seen not including the full story? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, to your first point, I think I've addressed that, that these Democrat governors and mayors in not just Minnesota but in states across the country are essentially, you know, they've referred to ICE agents who, again, are brave men and women. | ||
| And I would encourage everyone in this room, and I would encourage Governor Walls and other Democrats who are demeaning law enforcement to sit down and have a cup of coffee with an ICE agent or a Border Patrol agent. | ||
| These are great, patriotic men and women who have families, who put on the uniform every day, and are following our nation's immigration laws at the direction of their bosses and again at the direction of the law. | ||
| They are simply trying to enforce the law. | ||
| And the Democrat Party has demeaned these individuals. | ||
| They've even referred to them as Nazis and as the Gestapo. | ||
| And that is absolutely leading to the violence we're seeing in the streets. | ||
| If you look at some of the images out of Minneapolis last night, look at this vehicle. | ||
| Look at what it says. | ||
| It says F-ICE. | ||
| You have these individuals who are putting their middle finger, proudly so, at the camera. | ||
| Another ICE individual, a vehicle that was vandalized last night by these left-wing agitators. | ||
| People don't do this without encouragement from people in power who make them feel like it's okay. | ||
| Here's another one. | ||
| And I'm pretty sure this car, you can't see it, said the best agent is a dead agent or something to that effect. | ||
| This is despicable rhetoric that we're seeing. | ||
| And the media is absolutely complicit in this violence because if you look at the headline from CNN, protests erupt after federal agent shoots man in Minneapolis. | ||
| That is not the story. | ||
| That is not the truth. | ||
| If you actually want to know the truth, you can look at what the Department of Homeland Security released, which is that this ICE agent was executing a targeted operation against a Venezuelan illegal alien who was unlawfully present in the country, who fled by car and then fled by foot. | ||
| And when this ICE agent tried to detain the individual, three more of his comrades came rushing out of a house and started ambushing and attacking the ICE agent. | ||
| They used a shovel or a broom to smash his face in. | ||
| And so, yes, that agent had to use self-defense and take up his weapon to protect his own life. | ||
| That is what's happening on the streets of Minneapolis. | ||
| That's what's happening on the streets, unfortunately, of these Democrat-run cities and states where you have elected officials who are encouraging such violence against our brave men and women in law enforcement. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you, Caroline. | |
| I have two questions. | ||
| First, a follow-up on one of my colleagues who asked you about the president's interview with lawyers. | ||
| You said that he was joking about canceling the elections. | ||
| But Americans for generations have fought and died for democracy, for this democracy. | ||
| Are you saying that the president finds the idea of canceling elections funny? | ||
| Andrew, were you in the room? | ||
| No, you weren't. | ||
| I was in the room. | ||
| I heard the conversation. | ||
| And only someone like you would take that so seriously and pose it at a question that way. | ||
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unidentified
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Thank you, Caroline. | |
| Senator Elizabeth Warren said that the president called her earlier this week to discuss caps on credit card interest rates. | ||
| I'm curious, would the president work with her and other Democrats in Congress on a legislative fix to this issue? | ||
| I think the president would work in good faith with anyone in Congress for a good legislative fix that would benefit the American people. | ||
| And that's precisely why he called Senator Warren earlier this week on that matter. | ||
| Earlier, you were just defending ICE agents generally. | ||
| And earlier on, Secretary Noton spoke to the media and she said, among other things, that they are doing everything correctly. | ||
| 32 people died in ICE custody last year. | ||
| 170 U.S. citizens were detained by ICE. | ||
| And Renee Good was shot in the head and killed by an ICE agent. | ||
| How does that equate to them doing that with incredible? | ||
| Why was Renee Goode unfortunately and tragically killed? | ||
| Oh, you're asking me my opinion? | ||
| Because an ICE agent acted recklessly until they're unjustified. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| So you're a biased reporter with a left-wing opinion. | ||
| What do you want me to do? | ||
| Yeah, because you're a left-wing hack. | ||
| You're not a reporter. | ||
| You're posing in this room as a journalist. | ||
| And it's so clear by the premise of your question. | ||
| And you and the people in the media who have such biases but fake like you're a journalist, you shouldn't even be sitting in that seat. | ||
| But you're pretending like you're a journalist, but you're a left-wing activist. | ||
| And the question that you just raised and your answer proves your bias. | ||
| You should be reporting on the facts. | ||
| You should be reporting on the cases. | ||
| Do you have the numbers of how many American citizens were killed at the hands of illegal aliens who ICE is trying to remove from this country? | ||
| I bet you don't. | ||
| I bet you didn't even read up on those stories. | ||
| I bet you never even read about Lake and Riley or Jocelyn Nungre or all of the innocent Americans who were killed at the hands of illegal aliens in this country. | ||
| And the brave men and women of ICE are doing everything in their power to remove those heinous individuals and make our communities safer. | ||
| And shame on people like you in the media who have a crooked view and have a biased view and pretend like you're a real honest journalist. | ||
| Two quick questions on Iran. | ||
| I wanted to ask first, just if you can say, how close was the president to potentially launching strikes last night and was it the gold states that convinced him not to do that as some of the region there have said? | ||
| Well look Kelly I know there's been a lot of speculation in the media about what the president is going to do at any given moment or any given night and I would say a lot of these stories to be honest with you I've been reading them and they've been based on anonymous sources who are pretending or guessing to know the president's thinking. | ||
| The truth is only President Trump knows what he's going to do and a very, very small team of advisors are read into his thinking on that. | ||
| And as I just told you, he continues to closely monitor the situation on the ground in Iran. | ||
| And as we saw yesterday, he had heard that the killings and executions would stop. | ||
| And we have seen 800 people their lives have been spared as a result of that. | ||
| The president continues to closely monitor but also keep all of his options on the table. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Caroline, two separate questions. | |
| Sure. | ||
| On the Machado meeting first, what is it that the president feels that he needs to hear from her or from the opposition party that he hadn't heard prior to today or he wanted to hear in the meeting to be able to convince him to commit to some sort of a timeline for elections? | ||
| I'm not sure the president is going into such the meeting with expectations like you just laid out, Fran. | ||
| I don't think he needs to hear anything from Ms. Michado. | ||
| I think generally this is a meeting that the president was willing to take and willing to accept to meet Ms. Machado in person and to just have a frank and positive discussion about what's taking place in Venezuela. | ||
|
unidentified
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And on the subject of Greenland, Jeff Landry, the President's special envoy for Greenland, wasn't in the White House meeting yesterday. | |
| Can you say why that was and what exactly the role he is playing in these conversations about acquiring Greenland? | ||
| Well the Vice President and the Secretary of State were present for that meeting and the meeting, it was a productive meeting. | ||
| It was a good meeting and in that meeting the two sides agreed to really establish a working group of individuals who will continue to have technical talks on the acquisition of Greenland. | ||
| Those talks will take place, I'm told, every two to three weeks. | ||
| So this is a conversation the administration intends to keep having with the Danes and with the respected delegation from Greenland. | ||
| But the president has made his priority quite clear. | ||
| He wants the United States to acquire Greenland. | ||
| He thinks it's in our best national security to do that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There have been multiple instances of American citizens being detained by ICE. | |
| And I'm wondering what the administration is asking the agency to do. | ||
| What steps is the administration asking the agency to take to ensure that Americans are not wrongly arrested? | ||
| Obviously, ICE is focused on detaining individuals who are unlawfully present in the country. | ||
| And there have been hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who have been arrested and detained and deported from this country by ICE over the course of the last year. | ||
| And that's their intention, and that is their goal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Elizabeth. | |
| Thank you, Carolyn. | ||
| What about Greenland? | ||
| You reportedly sent troops over there. | ||
| Does that change at all what the president is doing on this? | ||
| And then, a second question: yesterday in a Senate Health hearing, John Senator Josh Hawley repeatedly asked a doctor if men can get pregnant, and she did not directly answer that. | ||
| What are your thoughts on that? | ||
| Well, to your first question on Greenland, I don't think troops in Europe impact a decision-making process, nor does it impact his goal of the acquisition of Greenland at all. | ||
| To your second question, I mean, anyone in their right mind with common sense who's speaking honestly and candidly will say that men cannot get pregnant. | ||
| And I think I can attest to that myself. | ||
| So thank you all very much. | ||
|
unidentified
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Today, the United Nations Security Council holds an emergency meeting as anti-government protests continue in Iran. | |
| The meeting's happening at the request of the United States, and President Trump weighs options for a possible intervention. | ||
| Watch the Security Council meeting live at 3 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, and online at c-span.org. | ||
| Friday, on C-SPAN's Ceasefire, at a time when finding common ground matters most in Washington, Republican New York Congressman Mike Lawler and Democratic New Jersey Congressman Josh Gottheimer come together for a conversation on the top issues facing Congress as both parties prepare for the upcoming midterm elections. | ||
| Join host Dasha Burns. | ||
| Bridging the Divide in American Politics. | ||
| Watch Ceasefire Friday at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
|
Deployment of Main Parachutes
00:15:44
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On Saturday, we'll have live coverage of the inauguration of Virginia Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger, along with Lieutenant Governor-elect Ghazala Hashmi and Attorney General Elect Jay Jones. | |
| From Richmond, Virginia, watch live at 12 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app and online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series. | ||
| Sunday with our guest Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. poet laureate Rita Dove, who has authored several collections of poetry. | ||
| Don't think you can forget her. | ||
| Don't even try. | ||
| She's not going to budge. | ||
| No choice but to grant her space, crown her with sky, for she is one of the many, and she is each of us. | ||
|
unidentified
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She joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein. | |
| Did your teachers say, well, look, poetry is not a big career future. | ||
| You should write prose. | ||
| People tell you that or you see, I didn't even know that it was something that you could do and live with your life. | ||
| I thought that, and I was writing poetry from the age of 10, I guess, but it was always a secret thing. | ||
| It was a thing that I wrote and thought, okay, this is my secret. | ||
| It was my thing that I enjoyed. | ||
| I didn't realize that a little black girl could become a poet. | ||
|
unidentified
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Watch America's Book Club with Rita Dove. | |
| Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific. | ||
| Only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Next, NASA SpaceX Crew-11 splashing down off the coast of Southern California after a 167-day mission to the International Space Station. | ||
| The mission ended a month early because of an unspecified medical concern with one of the astronauts. | ||
| After landing in the Pacific Ocean, the spacecraft was lifted onto a boat and the four crew members exited the spacecraft to receive routine medical examinations. | ||
| Now, while we await AOS or acquisition of signal, let's go through a brief recap of today's events. | ||
| Hatch closure took place at 2.29 p.m. Central Time after all four crew members floated into Dragon for their ride home. | ||
| They took time to configure the spacecraft cabin, put on their suits, and get seated ahead of undocking, which occurred at 4.20 p.m. Central. | ||
| Dragon's departure burns helped move it out of the keepout sphere and approach ellipsoid, which are both invisible boundaries we monitor around the space station. | ||
| Since then, we completed the deorbit burn at 1.51. | ||
| Oh, and you're getting your first views of re-entry. | ||
| This is live, and if you're in California, you can go see this with your own eyes. | ||
| This is Crew 11 re-entering after 167 days in space. | ||
| Again, we are in a loss of signal period. | ||
| This is a tracked period as the spacecraft re-enters Earth's atmosphere. | ||
| We anticipate regaining signal with Crew 11 momentarily. | ||
| And when the spacecraft reaches an altitude of 18,000 feet above Earth, two drogue chutes will deploy to slow it down ahead of the four main parachutes deploying at 6,000 feet in altitude. | ||
| Now, splashdown will be the milestone we will see after that, which is expected for 2.41 a.m. Central Time. | ||
| So again, we're standing by for acquisition of signal and continued communication with Crew 11, expecting that just a few minutes from now. | ||
| SpaceX Dragon, loud and clear. | ||
| We have you the same, loud and clear. | ||
| Expect automated chute deployment. | ||
|
unidentified
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Copy. | |
| Automated. | ||
| She's deployed. | ||
| All right. | ||
| So there we heard that we had confirmation of that acquisition of Signal or AOS. | ||
|
unidentified
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It actually came in a minute early. | |
| So that's good news there. | ||
| We heard the core inform the crew to expect drogue parachute deployment that happens when Dragon senses the right speed and altitude. | ||
| So that's roughly about 350 miles per hour and around 18,000 feet in altitude. | ||
| There we have a view from Dragon Copy is expecting nominal altitude. | ||
| So we'll have that drogue deploy in about a minute from now, but we have our first views from the WV57. | ||
| This is a high-altitude tracking plane that is providing these thermal signatures via infrared. | ||
| This is really cool to see here as we continue to track Dragon on its way back to planet Earth. | ||
| So momentarily, we expect for visual and brace for drogue window. | ||
| Dragon has saved the propulsion system as we anticipate drogue deployment any moment now. | ||
| Drogue parachutes are utilized to stabilize and decelerate the vehicle further prior to deployment of the main parachutes. | ||
| drogue should be deploying here in a couple seconds and mains will follow in about one minute there we have visual confirmation of drogue deploy Visual two healthy drogues. | ||
|
unidentified
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Kind of a cool shot. | |
| I think we had the recovery vessel in the background there just momentarily. | ||
| Main parachutes deploying in about 20 seconds. | ||
| The main parachutes deploy when the vehicle is about 119 miles per hour and around 6,000 feet. | ||
| There we can see visual confirmation of deployment of the four mains. | ||
| Four healthy mains. | ||
| These main parachutes help decelerate the spacecraft even further. | ||
| So they deploy around 119 miles per hour and help they'll decelerate it down to about 15, 16 miles per hour. | ||
| And that will be the speed in which the spacecraft is traveling upon splashdown. | ||
|
unidentified
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Once again, we're anticipating splashdown at 1241 a.m. | |
| Copy 1,000. | ||
| We'll now begin to hear Crew 11 Commander Zina Cardman call out the altitude from her seat there in Dragon Endeavour. | ||
| SpaceX's mission control team in Hawthorne continues to report the precise landing coordinates to the recovery team. | ||
| Copy, 800. | ||
| Those main parachutes now fully reefed or inflated. | ||
| We ensure that the parachutes inflate over a few seconds to help reduce the shock to the system. | ||
|
unidentified
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Six hundred meters. | |
| Copy, six hundred. | ||
| All around great views of Dragon Endeavor as it continues its way back to Earth. | ||
|
unidentified
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Six hundred meters. | |
| Copy 400 crew are braced. | ||
|
unidentified
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Standing by for splashdown. | |
| Splashdown of Crew 11. | ||
| After 167 days in space, Dragon and NASA astronauts Xena Cardman and Mike Fink, Kimya Yui of JAXA, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alec Platinov are back on Earth. | ||
| Dragon, SpaceX, we see splashdown. | ||
|
unidentified
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SpaceX Dragon, copy controls, splashdown and mains are slot. | |
| We are in 4.800. | ||
| SpaceX copies and we see the same mains cut. | ||
| On behalf of SpaceX and NASA, welcome home, Crew 11. | ||
|
unidentified
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SpaceX Dragon, it's so good to be home. | |
| With deep gratitude to the teams who got us there and back. | ||
| Vehicle safety verifications in progress. | ||
| We'll report back when recovery personnel are en route. | ||
|
unidentified
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Again, we have splashdown of NASA's SpaceX Crew-11 mission. | |
| 167-day mission, 165 of those being spent on board the International Space Station, now splashing down off the coast of California. | ||
| That splashdown coming right on time at 2:41 a.m. Central Time. | ||
| The SpaceX recovery ship and team has been waiting for Dragon Splashdown, and they will now begin making their way to the Splashdown location. | ||
| It looks like we even have a couple of visitors around the spacecraft. | ||
| If you look very closely, you might even see some dolphins. | ||
| The spacecraft is now being lifted. | ||
| It'll be set on the nest and centered. | ||
| It'll be oriented so that the side hatch is facing forward for the crew to egress. | ||
| It'll be moved into the hangar underneath that helipad that you see illuminated in green on the top of the ship and then pulled towards the mezzanine area so that the crew can be helped outside of the hatch. | ||
| Once open, a SpaceX medical doctor will be the first to check in on Cardman. | ||
| Fink, Yuey, and Platinov are crew 11 crew members and see if they're ready for egress or exiting the vehicle. | ||
| This is a standard procedure for all of our crew returns. | ||
| This view coming from the recovery vessel, as you see Dragon, and at the very bottom, that is the nest in which we were discussing, and that's where Dragon will remain now and all the way back to port. | ||
| And it looks like our first crew member out of the spacecraft is NASA astronaut Mike Fink. | ||
| Yes, that's the pilot of the Crew 11 mission aboard Dragon. | ||
| Fink now being taken to those standard medical checks. | ||
| That's NASA astronaut Zena Cardman wrapping up her first mission to space, commander of the Crew-11 spacecraft. | ||
| Our next crew member to exit the spacecraft is JAXA, JAXA's astronaut Kim Ya Yui. | ||
| Yui just reached the milestone of 300 days in space across two missions. | ||
| You can see some cheering on the SpaceX recovery ship, and you can probably also hear a little bit of celebration here in Mission Control Houston as well. | ||
|
Crew 11 Safe Return
00:15:47
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And we see the fourth crew member of Crew 11 being helped from the vehicle now. | |
| That is Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platinov also wrapping up his first mission to space. | ||
| Now that NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fink, Kim Yayoi of JAXA, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platinov are safely back home on Earth and getting checked out by the medical teams, we're going to wrap up our live coverage of their return. | ||
| This cruise journey concludes following a launch on August 1st, 2025 aboard a Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station. | ||
| It was the fourth flight for Fink, who now has 549 days in space, the second for Yui with 309 days in space, and the first flight for Cardman and Platinov, who now have 167 days in space. | ||
| With their mission coming to an end, the crew have began packing up their research and personal items for the return to Earth last week. | ||
| The Soyuz MS-28 crew, including NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergei Kutzvurchkov and Sergei Mikayev remain aboard the space station and will continue their mission through this summer. | ||
| Crew-12 is currently scheduled to launch as soon as mid-February and we'll provide more information once that is available. | ||
| Good morning and welcome to NASA's Johnson Space Center for the Crew 11 post-splashdown news conference. | ||
| I'm George Alderman, NASA's Deputy Press Secretary and I'll be moderating today's news conference. | ||
| We are joined today by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and Joel Montalbano, Deputy Associate Administrator for NASA's Space Operations Missions Directorate. | ||
| We'll be taking questions through our phone bridge, so media interested in taking a question, please press STAR 1 to enter the queue. | ||
| Before we get started, we'll begin with opening remarks from Administrator Isaacman. | ||
| Good morning, everyone. | ||
| At 3:41 a.m. Eastern Time, SpaceX Dragon Endeavour spacecraft successfully splashed down off the coast of California in pristine weather. | ||
| This mission brought Crew 11 safely home. | ||
| NASA astronauts Xena Cardman, Mike Fink, JAX Astronaut, Kimye Yui, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Plutanov are all safe and in good spirits. | ||
| All crew members are currently undergoing the routine post-splashdown medical evaluation. | ||
| The crew member of concern is doing fine. | ||
| We will share updates on their health as soon as it's appropriate to do so. | ||
| Over the past five months aboard the International Space Station, Crew 11 completed a series of demanding and productive mission objectives. | ||
| The crew spent more than 850 hours on scientific studies, including research on bone loss and microgravity and the long-term storage of cryogenic fluids in space with direct applications in medical and industrial fields. | ||
| This work advanced our understanding of long-duration spaceflight and contributed valuable research that benefit life here on Earth and further human exploration. | ||
| To be overwhelmingly clear, Crew 11 was a very successful mission. | ||
| While this was the first time we had to return crew slightly ahead of schedule, NASA was ready. | ||
| The team responded quickly and professionally, as did the teams across the agency, working closely with our commercial partners and executed a very safe return. | ||
| This is exactly why we train, and this is NASA at its finest. | ||
| Spaceflight will always carry some degree of uncertainty. | ||
| That is the nature of exploration. | ||
| Fundamentally, it's why we're in space to learn. | ||
| It's why NASA prepares for the unexpected, so we are ready to respond decisively and safely. | ||
| The successful return of Crew 11 is a direct result of that preparation. | ||
| I want to personally thank the teams across NASA, SpaceX, our international partners who made this possible. | ||
| Your professionalism, discipline, and commitment to crew safety were on full display. | ||
| Because of your work, four astronauts are home, safe, and will soon be reunited with their families. | ||
| You did this while making preparations for Crew 12, for Artemis II, and doing the other things at NASA while we pursue our great mission of science and discovery. | ||
| Well done. | ||
| Now I'll turn it over to Joel Monteblano, Deputy Associate Administrator for Space Operations, Mission Directorate. | ||
| Thank you, Jared. | ||
| And thank you again for joining us on this Dragon Crew 11 splashdown press brief. | ||
| Just a couple things, an awesome landing. | ||
| We had the winds at the landing site were less than three knots. | ||
| The wave period was very small. | ||
| I think we saw about a two and a half foot, but just extremely perfect landing opportunity today, and it was awesome to see the team take advantage of it and work towards us. | ||
| It was just about a week ago that the decision was made to bring this crew home early. | ||
| I can tell you we used the standard processes, the nominal landing support, the nominal landing support from NASA, SpaceX, the international partners. | ||
| The team meticulously went through all the processes to get ready for landing, and we executed the same processes and same landing support that we would have done if we brought this crew home in late February. | ||
| So just a huge thanks to everybody, and you saw the result of that today. | ||
| This crew was in space just under 170 days. | ||
| They performed a little less than 900 hours of science experiments on board. | ||
| Those are hands-on science experiments. | ||
| And that encompassed about 140 different experiments. | ||
| They saw five spacecrafts arrive, three spacecraft depart. | ||
| And the work we did on the International Space Station for this expedition, as well as others, benefits humanity on Earth and benefits and teaches us for exploration for what we're going to use in the Artemis program as we go back to the moon and to Mars. | ||
| Just a huge effort across the board by the team. | ||
| In closing, I want to just thank the team. | ||
| I'll do say one thing. | ||
| We did make a decision prior to today, a couple days earlier, that we are bringing the crew to a medical facility in the San Diego, you know, off the San Diego area. | ||
| And so the crew will stay there. | ||
| They'll stay there overnight. | ||
| And we expect to bring the crew back to Houston on Friday, obviously pending the medical. | ||
| And, you know, we do this. | ||
| We bring the crew there. | ||
| We do the medical activities that Dr. Polk talked about with you a couple days ago, things we can only do on Earth. | ||
| We're also doing the post-flight data collection on this crew. | ||
| Every crew has a number of things that they've signed up for. | ||
| We collect the data and we use that to learn, help us in exploration, also to give the crew some rest, right? | ||
| That's been a busy time for them. | ||
| We've been working them extremely hard throughout the expedition. | ||
| It's been a long day. | ||
| Give them some rest. | ||
| Everything with that, they'll be staying overnight. | ||
| So with that, I'll hand it back over to George. | ||
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unidentified
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Great. | |
| And with that, we'll move into questions. | ||
| Our first question comes from Bill Harwood with CBS News. | ||
| Our first question comes from Bill Harwood with TBS. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hey, Bill Harwood, can you guys hear me? | |
| Loud and clear. | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh, thank you very much. | |
| I've got a Crew-12 Artemis II question since Crew 11's on the ground and you're looking at moving up crew 2. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| I'm hearing some crosstalk. | ||
| Are you all hearing me okay? | ||
| Bill Harwick, can you guys hear me? | ||
| We hear you reasonably well. | ||
|
unidentified
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I want me to try again? | |
| Just if you, we were getting your question, if you want to complete it. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, let me, I'm sorry about that. | |
| Yeah, it's a crew-12 Artemis II question, and with 11 down on the ground and crew-12 being accelerated, I guess what I'm wondering is what sort of separation you need between Artemis II and Crew-12 in terms of the port crew staging, you've got comms with DSN and TEDRIS and all that kind of stuff. | ||
| I mean, there must be some minimum separation to avoid the kind of overlap that would prevent that. | ||
| And it looks like you're really trying to do it. | ||
| You're trying to get Artemis II off in the February window. | ||
| But if you move up crew-12, there has to be some minimum separation, I would think. | ||
| I'm just wondering how realistic it is both of those missions can get off in early February. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| Well, maybe I can start, and Joel, if you want to give maybe some of the technical components to that, like on comms and such. | ||
| I would just say that this is exactly what we should be doing at NASA. | ||
| I mean, we have the means as an agency and should be expected of our agency to be able to bring our astronauts home at any time as required under circumstances like this, which is exactly what we did today with Crew 11, while making preparations to pull forward our next mission, like Crew-12, while also progressing on our Artemis II campaign for what is going to be probably one of the most important human spaceflight missions in the last half century. | ||
| I mean, I took a briefing a couple weeks ago on what happens in what I would describe as the extremely unlikely event that we need to use two suit-up rooms at nearly the same time. | ||
| And I was like, what a great problem it would be for the agency to have that. | ||
| Now, what I would say is every one of these campaigns, while there is some overlap of some personnel enrolls, are parallel efforts. | ||
| We bring our crew home, we make preparations for our next crew to the International Space Station with Crew 12. | ||
| We continue to go through the motions with Artemis II, of which we've already stated we are not going to specify Which launch date are we going to pursue within the already published windows until we have Artemis II out at the pad and we get through a wet dress to give us the confidence. | ||
| So, at this point, I don't see any reason why we wouldn't continue along those parallel paths. | ||
| And if it comes down to a point in time where we have to find where we have to deconflict between two human spaceflight missions, that is a very good problem to have at NASA. | ||
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unidentified
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You're exactly right. | |
| That's exactly what we're doing. | ||
| The commercial crew and ISS program are working to look at what we can accelerate. | ||
| You have to back up a few days from your picked launch date, as you know, for static fire, and then you have to do some reconfiguration at Kennedy Space Center in order to support from the Artemis work to the static fire. | ||
| And so, we'll lay out all those timelines, look at how everything's going, and then make the decision as we get a little closer. | ||
| The teams are already looking, stripping down, you know, what makes sense, what we can do. | ||
| And our next question will come from Marcia Dunn with the Associated Press. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hello, good morning. | |
| I'm wondering: is the alien astronaut doing better or worse than before, or did they need extra help getting home? | ||
| And I'm wondering: is the crew at the hospital yet? | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, all crew members right now are safe, they're in good spirits, they're going through the standard post-splashdown medical checks. | ||
| I believe the helicopter, if it hasn't left the recovery ship, it's imminent to do so. | ||
| And they're all going to the hospital as we had determined days ago as the proper thing to do under the circumstances. | ||
| But as I mentioned, the crew member in question specifically is doing fine. | ||
| And with that, our next question will come from Jeff Faust with Space News. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| I know a formal lessons learned process will come later, but over the last week, has anything come to mind of things that you would do differently if this were to happen again in the future? | ||
| For example, different procedures, different medical equipment on the station, things like that. | ||
| Any lessons that have come up in the last week? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| You know, the team's going to take a look at what happened. | ||
| And right now, nothing has really jumped out. | ||
| Like I said, we were able to use the standard process for the undocking work and the landing work, moving all the teams over to the West Coast, the NASA team, SpaceX team, the international partners. | ||
| SpaceX did a lot of work to get us ready. | ||
| They did some practice runs with the helicopter to the hospital. | ||
| We contacted the hospital in advance to make sure they were ready, went over everything. | ||
| Part of the lessons learned, and what we do as part of the next flight readiness review for each mission is to review lessons learned from the past missions. | ||
| So we'll do that, and then those lessons will be carried forward. | ||
| Yeah, I would just layer on to this and say that it is a standard process to conduct a thorough debrief. | ||
| And oftentimes, people associate that with what did we get wrong? | ||
| And for sure, in any circumstance, you're going to capture lessons learned and apply it. | ||
| I think when we go through the debrief on this, we're going to learn a lot about the things we got right and did it very well and make sure we apply that in other applications going forward. | ||
| So, this, from my perspective, watching it play out from the time of the original situation developing to get our astronauts safely in the water and on their way to medical care, was executed almost near flawlessly. | ||
| Our next question will be from Joey Roulette with Reuters. | ||
| Hey, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Question for Jared or Joel. | |
| NASA, of course, has said the astronaut has been doing fine and is stable, but was the astronaut never not in a stable condition throughout all of this. | ||
| And then a second quick question. | ||
| And I'm wondering if this medical experience will inform any kind of research or be published in any paper after all this. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| I think without going into specifics beyond what was already shared, obviously we took this action because it was a serious medical condition, right? | ||
| So, you know, in that respect, it was a serious situation. | ||
| The astronaut in question is fine right now, good spirits and going through the proper, you know, the proper medical checkouts. | ||
| Really a bunch more to add to that. | ||
| And our next question will come from Will Robinson-Smith with Space Flight Now. | ||
| Hi, Ell. | ||
| Thanks for taking the time to talk with us this morning to either the administrator or to Joel. | ||
| Before this medical issue came up, the plan for station was for the cargo dragon for CR-33 to undock about a day or so after the spacewalk that was planned for today. | ||
| Will that dragon remain at station until crew 12 arrives? | ||
| And then just a quick statistics question for crew 12's launch. | ||
| Has a date been selected for that and will he be flying off pad 40 or 39A? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks. | |
| All right. | ||
| There were a handful of those in there. | ||
| We're flying the crew 12 off of Space Launch Complex 40. | ||
| And from a standpoint, this is what we're going to spend the next few days on of picking a new date for the SpaceX 33 undock, the HTV-X unbirth, and then how does that work with respect to crew-12? | ||
|
Emergency Training On Orbit
00:15:26
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| The teams will look at it and see what makes sense, which one to go first. | ||
| But that's open work and the forward work for us probably next week before we get some answers on that. | ||
| And our next question will be from Anthony Leone with Spectrum News. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, and thank you very much for taking our questions this morning. | |
| You said that the astronaut suffered a serious medical condition. | ||
| Would that be enough to prevent him or her from going back into space and doing another mission on the ISS? | ||
| I would think it's incredibly premature to even consider that right now. | ||
| The highest priority is the health and welfare of our crew members. | ||
| They just executed a near-perfect mission on orbit. | ||
| So I said that during the initial press conference that I think, regardless of the phase of flight we were in or the timeline on the expedition, we would have arrived at the same conclusion. | ||
| What Crew 11 did to make this so much easier is executing so well on all their scientific objectives. | ||
| So in that case, the crew did a fantastic job and I think that would reflect well on future crew selection criteria. | ||
| Our next question will come from Jackie Waddles with CNN. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi folks, thanks so much for doing this. | |
| So question about ISS operations while we wait for crew 12 to arrive. | ||
| I was curious what training the cosmonauts have to assist with any operations on the U.S. side. | ||
| I think I understood at least one cosmonaut may have training on NASA EVA suits. | ||
| For example, if there's a hardware issue that requires an emergency spacewalk. | ||
| Could y'all give us some insight into that situation? | ||
| Thanks so much. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Generally what we do where we are today is we do emergency training with each crew. | ||
| So the Russian cosmonauts come over to Houston. | ||
| We do emergency training. | ||
| Our U.S. astronauts go over to Moscow and do emergency training there. | ||
| Sergei Kunsevirtkovs does have some basic EVA training. | ||
| Our plan, if we had, you know, there's not anything on space station where you have a single hardware failure that requires you to take immediate action. | ||
| You always have a second piece of hardware. | ||
| There are some things that we'd like to take action pretty quick. | ||
| And right now, the plan would be just to wait for the crew 12 crew to get up there if we had to do any spacewalks. | ||
| Inside, we spent some extra time this last week in training Chris Williams up on some things that he hadn't been trained on. | ||
| And so the handover from Crew 11 to Chris that took a little extra time, which also added to why we waited the seven or eight days. | ||
| So that's helped. | ||
| The cosmonauts, we can get them training in real time if we need their help on certain activities. | ||
| So I believe we're covered and ready to answer any other questions. | ||
|
unidentified
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Next question will come from Claire Cameron with the Scientific American. | |
| Hi there. | ||
| I have a couple of questions. | ||
| One, you mentioned, Mr. Isaaclin, that the agency will release information about the nature of the crew members' medical issue at a future time. | ||
| Is there a timeline for that? | ||
| And then also, how will this incident, if at all, inform the agency's preparation for the Artemis crewed missions? | ||
| Will there be changes to the medical protocols, both for pre-flight and during mission? | ||
| Well, I think first, I actually don't believe that I said I know the question before of what information we would share. | ||
| First, we are very committed to being transparent, but this is a, you know, there are some medical privacy considerations here. | ||
| That said, to the extent that we are in a position to share more information publicly and have the necessary consents, we would do so. | ||
| I would say almost assuredly, we would share information across other space agencies and commercial space providers. | ||
| I mean, this is why we're there to learn. | ||
| And things that could have implications on the health and wellness of crew members is vitally important to all those that undertake these types of missions. | ||
| In terms of preparation for subsequent missions, whether it's on the International Space Station or on Artemis II, we're always learning here. | ||
| I mean, that again is why we put our astronauts in this environment. | ||
| I would say that there are a lot of circumstances, an incredible amount, that we can train and prepare for to treat on orbit. | ||
| And the International Space Station has exceptional capabilities. | ||
| Our vehicles, be that Dragon, Orion, Starliner, have medical kits. | ||
| There are some circumstances that will develop where you're going to want the option to come home. | ||
| And we build that into our flight plans. | ||
| There are early return options on Artemis II. | ||
| There are options to bring astronauts back from the space station in hours, not days. | ||
| So I think that the fact that we did take some extra time in here does speak to the stability of the situation, how well everyone responded to it. | ||
| So this is, again, this is what we train for. | ||
| It's built in our planning. | ||
| It was executed very well. | ||
| We will capture any relevant lessons learned to inform preparations for subsequent missions. | ||
| But I think we're in pretty good shape right now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Our next question will come from Mark Caro with Aviation Week and Space Technology. | |
| Yes, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
My question is whether the medical issues surfaced as a result of the research medically that you're doing aboard the space station, or did this something arise that wasn't connected with a research discovery, But something maybe more immediate. | |
| I mean, the only thing that we've commented on, Dr. Polk spoke about specifically during the press conference, is in Dr. Polk's medical opinion, this was unrelated to any operational environments on space station. | ||
| I think that question was framed with respect to EVA, even though even those preparations may not have even been applicable for a crew member. | ||
| But I think if we're expanding it to something even broader than operational preparations and any of the potential research interactions, I would say we don't know at this point. | ||
| I mean, this is something that could have happened on Earth, you know, completely outside the microgravity environment at that point. | ||
| I don't think we know that versus just being in microgravity versus potential interactions experiments. | ||
| I just think it would be very premature to draw any conclusions or close any doors at this point. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Next question will be from Jackie Goddard with The Times of London. | |
| Yes, hello. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I wondered if you could speak a little about the emotional side of all this. | ||
| Obviously, we saw four very stoic astronauts keeping their spirits up, but the disappointment of cutting short a mission was described by Mike Fink as a bittersweet. | ||
| Could you just talk us through sort of how you support that psychological side and that sort of emotional element to how you support the astronauts through that? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Well, you know, any time you have an activity that you plan to complete and you get cut short, obviously it affects you a little bit. | ||
| These astronauts are incredible. | ||
| We have some of the best trained astronauts, and not just NASA, across the international partnership. | ||
| So they're prepared, they talk about, they know that they could have a situation on orbit that could bring them home early. | ||
| And so it's how you pick up from that and move on. | ||
| And what we saw in this last week is, you know, they were sad, of course, but they were ready. | ||
| They helped train Chris. | ||
| They helped work with the cosmonauts. | ||
| They talked to the ground on a regular basis. | ||
| I would tell you they were even cracking jokes a couple times. | ||
| So, you know, sad, but they're professional and they understand what happens when you fly in space. | ||
| I would just add that they could have been on a one-year expedition and they would probably have told you that it's bittersweet coming home. | ||
| Astronauts really enjoy being in space right now, but I think they should take comfort in the fact they executed extraordinarily well on an unexpected situation and again completed the near majority of their mission objectives on orbit. | ||
| Crew 11 was a successful mission. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Next question will come from Richard Tu with the Post newspaper. | |
| Question for Joel, the reduction in crew launch station right now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How will that affect ongoing experiments and how are those remaining experiments prioritized? | |
| Thank you. | ||
| So a lot of experiments, good question. | ||
| A lot of experiments on board. | ||
| There's a time element from when that experiment launched to when it needs to be complete. | ||
| And so the priority will be to get as many of those time-limited experiments done. | ||
| So we'll work with Chris. | ||
| Chris will be prime on that. | ||
| He knows if he needs help, we can get help from either the ground or from his Russian cosmonaut friends. | ||
| And so, but from a standpoint of, sure, there'll be less, there's, you know, four or less people on board space station right now. | ||
| So there will be an impact, but we'll prioritize that on the time-critical science. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Next question will come from James Dowling-Healy with West Hartford Community Interactive. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| James Dowing-Healy, West Hartford Community Interactive. | ||
| I'd just like to start by saying welcome home to Crew 11 and I'd like to extend my best wishes to the crew member for a full and speedy recovery. | ||
| And also, I'd like to congratulate Mr. Isaacman on his confirmation. | ||
| My question is: how will the medical event impact NASA's staffing priorities on future longer-term missions? | ||
| Has the likelihood that there will have to be a medical doctor on future long-term missions increased, or will non-physician astronauts receive more medical training? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I could start on that one. | ||
| It's a good question, by the way. | ||
| It's come up many times: would circumstances have played out differently had there been a physician that was still on space station? | ||
| And I think generally the answer is no. | ||
| That speaks to the extensive training all the astronauts go through for medical conditions. | ||
| I mean, extensive training to be prepared for this type of circumstance, which again is why Crew 11 responded so well. | ||
| That said, we do have quite a few physicians that are in the astronaut corps. | ||
| So you have pretty, you know, the odds are pretty good that you'll usually have one up there at times. | ||
| But I don't think that would have changed the outcome. | ||
| All that said, I think when you look at experience or qualifications, it's generally helpful for human spaceflight and for the astronaut corps, especially as we look at longer-duration missions where we're hours away potentially from returning to Earth from the International Space Station, days away from the moon, but there will be a time that NASA will embark on missions to Mars. | ||
| And in that circumstance, likely the human body is going to potentially fail before some of the technology that's enabling it, in which case, having medical professionals that are available on those type of missions is additive. | ||
| But I think specific to this mission, I don't think it would have changed any of the outcomes or any of our decision-making. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Next question will be from Marcia Smith with SpacePolicyOnline.com. | |
| Thank you so much for taking my question. | ||
| You've mentioned several times that this was not an emergency and that in an emergency, an actual emergency, you could get the crew back much more quickly. | ||
| And I'm just curious, how many places are there that you can land since weather is always so difficult to predict? | ||
| So you were very lucky today you had these pristine conditions for landing. | ||
| But if you had a real emergency, there must be places other than the Pacific Ocean that you can land. | ||
| Can you still land back near Florida? | ||
| Or where could you land in an emergency? | ||
| Yeah, so we have the ability to land almost anywhere in the world. | ||
| We have an agreement with the U.S. military to be there within 24 hours of a landing with PJs to assist the crew. | ||
| And so we do have multiple opportunities. | ||
| Now, it all can depend on why you're undocking, right? | ||
| So if you have a space station emergency and you're undocking because of that, you can wait. | ||
| There's time and you can just stay in orbit. | ||
| The Dragon vehicle has a capability of about five days of reflight. | ||
| You use about a day-ish going up, so you do have some time. | ||
| If it's a medical thing and you need to get home, you'd come home anywhere in the world, and we'd use the U.S. military to get to them as quickly as we can. | ||
| And then from that, we'd figure out what the next steps would be. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I mean, that does speak again to the stability of the situation because you do have the capability to get in the water within hours. | ||
| You just ideally want to be in the water in a situation where you can actually help the crew members. | ||
| So certainly being in the middle of the Pacific or Atlantic doesn't serve us very well. | ||
| But we can constantly evaluate splashdown locations with acceptable weather that might be in international locations but could get a crew member to medical care urgently if necessary. | ||
| And we're constantly assessing that. | ||
| Wasn't necessary, obviously, in these circumstances. | ||
| Next question will be from Manuel Mazzanti with Exporción Especial. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you so much, Maruel Masanti Perlacione Espaciel. | |
| The main reason for bringing Crew 11 in an anticipated way was to try to have further medical exams on this crew member that was not feeling well. | ||
| I wonder, are these medical evaluations going to be led by NASA or some other institution? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And so we'll partner with the, you know, the our flight surgeons have specific training in aerospace medicine, and so they are the leads. | ||
| We work with the hospitals prior to each landing to kind of brief them on the pre, you know, on a conditioned astronaut when they come back. | ||
| And so it'll be led by our flight surgeons, but we'll obviously with the hospital in California, we'll be using their resources, so we'll be working cooperatively. | ||
| Our next question comes from Brett Tingley with Space.com. | ||
|
Rolling Over Plans
00:03:08
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|
unidentified
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Hey, thanks for taking the time to do this after what was a long night for you all. | |
| This is a question for Jared Isaacman. | ||
| I'm wondering, having been on multiple space flights yourself, how did those experiences inform how you approached this situation? | ||
| And what was it like being in your current role now watching re-entry splashdown recovery, having been there yourself? | ||
| So I would just say, you know, everybody here at NASA obviously is an extraordinary amount of experience preparing for situations that never would have been applicable to any of my previous training. | ||
| We obviously didn't go to the space station. | ||
| So I was just happy to observe all of our plans going in motion as expected from the time the original situation developed through the successful at least conclusion to the spaceflight component of it today. | ||
| And I would say do obviously have a lot of experience with Dragon Vehicle, and that's why I was, I think, in a position to follow along and know that we were doing things in absolutely the correct way. | ||
| As for just general reactions of seeing people that are astronauts that are happy in space and coming home from it, sure, I think that triggers a little bit of an emotional reaction for a lot of us in the room who had been through those circumstances. | ||
| To me, I think probably the best moment of all was just seeing the reactions of the families that had come here at Johnson Space Center to watch their loved ones come back safely from space. | ||
| Our next question comes from Denise Cho with NBC News. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thanks very much. | |
| I wanted to ask if there were any adjustments made to standard departure or slashdown procedures because of the medical issues, say to accommodate the needs of the affected crew member. | ||
| And then are there any updates on the two spacewalks that obviously had to be postponed? | ||
| Does this rave any new challenges on the station? | ||
| Are you having to shuffle things around at all? | ||
| Change any of the undocking procedures. | ||
| They were the standard procedures that we had planned and used. | ||
| And then your second question on the EVA. | ||
| So those two EVAs were not time critical. | ||
| And so we'll roll those over to the next expedition. | ||
| But again, neither of those EVAs were time critical, so we'll just roll them over. | ||
| And our final question this morning will come from Irene Klotz with Aviation Week. | ||
|
unidentified
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Irene, please hit your mute button. | |
| I'm sorry about that. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Are you expecting all four crew members will be released together at the same time from the hospital? | ||
|
Fed Chairman's Misstep
00:07:45
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| We would expect that to be the plan, yes. | ||
| And with that, that concludes today's news conference. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you to all the media who joined us and for your continued coverage. | |
| We look forward to hearing from the crew in the coming days during their own news conference. | ||
|
unidentified
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Please watch for an upcoming advisory with those details. | |
| Until then, thank you, and we'll see you next time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Today, the United Nations Security Council holds an emergency meeting as anti-government protests continue in Iran. | |
| The meeting's happening at the request of the United States, and President Trump weighs options for a possible intervention. | ||
| Watch the Security Council meeting live at 3 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, and online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| Friday, on C-SPAN's Ceasefire, at a time when finding common ground matters most in Washington, Republican New York Congressman Mike Lawler and Democratic New Jersey Congressman Josh Guttheimer come together for a conversation on the top issues facing Congress as both parties prepare for the upcoming midterm elections. | ||
| Join host Dasha Burns. | ||
| Bridging the Divide in American Politics. | ||
| Watch Ceasefire Friday at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| On Saturday, we'll have live coverage of the inauguration of Virginia Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger, along with Lieutenant Governor-elect Ghazala Hashmi and Attorney General ElectJ Jones. | ||
| From Richmond, Virginia, watch live at 12 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app and online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| Our first guest of the morning is Representative John Rose, Republican of Tennessee. | ||
| He serves on the Financial Services Committee, joining us to talk amongst many things, a look into Chair Powell and his actions. | ||
| Good morning to you. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Thanks for having me on the show this morning. | ||
| Well, thank you for coming on. | ||
| What do you think about this attention that's been paid to the Federal Reserve Chair? | ||
| Well, I think it's always good for these organizations, and particularly the Federal Reserve, because of the intended independence of the Fed. | ||
| But that doesn't mean that they're above being watched over to make sure they're being prudent and careful, frugal, even I might say, with their use of the resources that are ultimately really the resources of the American people. | ||
| Is this strictly about building or the construction project that the Federal Reserve, or as Democrats would say, or even some Republicans will say this goes further to limit the Fed's independence? | ||
| How would you say that? | ||
| Well, I think the answer truly is that we don't know because obviously an investigation by the Justice Department, they haven't revealed what the basis for that is at this point. | ||
| We probably wouldn't know about this investigation at this point, were it not for Chairman Powell himself reporting or releasing that he had been notified that he was the object of an investigation. | ||
| So we really don't know what the predicate for the investigation is, but many surmise that it relates to the building project in his Senate testimony about that. | ||
| You wrote on X when talking about this issue. | ||
| You said this GOG inquiry isn't about petty disagreements or interest rates. | ||
| Can you elaborate why you think that is? | ||
| Well, I think, well, I mean, it would be inappropriate for it to be about that. | ||
| So I presume they have what would be an appropriate objective for the investigation. | ||
| And it's yet to see what that is. | ||
| Obviously, every president since the Fed has been created has attempted to influence them either directly or subtly in some way, and this president is no different. | ||
| So that's where the speculation comes from. | ||
| I think that perhaps there's a different motive. | ||
| And I guess history will judge whether that's true or not. | ||
| There may be some problem here, and one would presume that there's at least suspicion of that. | ||
| You serve on financial services. | ||
| How do you think about the tenure of Chair Powell? | ||
| And particularly, do you think he's independent from being swayed by the president or other forces? | ||
| Well, I don't think any Fed chair is fully independent of the influence of the president. | ||
| The president has a lot of power. | ||
| I think, unfortunately, Fed Chairman Powell missed the call in the early days of the Biden administration when the profligate spending of the Biden administration was heating up the economy, ultimately leading to the serious inflation that we had, the worst in my adult lifetime. | ||
| You know, we had the Fed chairman in those days, he has to come and testify before our committee twice annually, and we had him there. | ||
| And many of us were prodding him at the time saying, don't you think inflation is going to be a problem? | ||
| Don't you think it's time for you to do something about it? | ||
| Of course, he can't control what was happening on the fiscal side. | ||
| So all of that government spending was building heat in the economy that was going to lead to inflation. | ||
| And what I think the Fed chairman mentioned or missed at the time was that once that inflation was in place, which is the nature of inflation, we saw it in the Carter inflation of the 1970s and 80s, is that it becomes a psychology and it's hard to then put it back in the box once it's out. | ||
| And so at the time, he described it as transitory. | ||
| And he latched on to the narrative at that time that the inflation was just transitory. | ||
| And many in the Biden administration tried to say that as well. | ||
| What later he admitted is that it was not transitory, and it's still with us. | ||
| And just as was the case in the 1980s, once inflation psychology sets in, it sometimes takes years to completely kind of remove it from the psyche of the populace and to get it out of the economy. | ||
| And that's what we're experiencing now. | ||
| Even though I think the policies of the Trump administration will ultimately subdue those inflationary pressures, and I think have already done a lot to do that, I think it takes time. | ||
| In the 80s, it took most of that decade before we got inflation tamed. | ||
| In this new inquiry, this new investigation by the Department of Justice, your chair, French Hill, said he quoted as saying it's an unnecessary distraction. | ||
| What do you think of that characterization coming from your chairman? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Well, I think he's talking about the penumbra, the aura around the entire situation that it's a distraction from other issues. | ||
| For example, Chair Powell should be coming to testify before our committee soon. | ||
| This may delay that. | ||
| I think there's been some discussion that it would delay that testimony. | ||
| And so that's a distraction from us handling the business that we need to. | ||
| The president's right on the cusp of naming a new Fed chair from all appearances. | ||
| He's made it clear it probably will not be reappointing Powell. | ||
| And so I think it just gets in the way of winding down that, this whole discussion. | ||
| However, it doesn't change the fact that if there's the basis for an investigation, then one should be conducted. | ||
| Representative John Rose is our guest. | ||
| And if you want to ask him questions about matters of Congress, 202748-8000 for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, and Independents 2027-8002, you can always text your questions at comments at 202-748-8003. | ||
|
America First?
00:15:42
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| We have some calls lined up for you. | ||
| Our first one joining us is Geno. | ||
| Gino joins us on our independent line. | ||
| He is from Galveston. | ||
| You're on with Tennessee Republican John Rose. | ||
| Geno, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| I'd like to jump back a little bit, but I think it would apply to this new topic also. | ||
| If I had one thing to an overreaching thing I would ask, if I could ask President Trump, I would say or ask, is it America first, oil slash bad actors second, and democracy third when you're dealing with Venezuela or any other country? | ||
| Or is it America first, democracy second, oil slash bad actors third? | ||
| You know, they're in Galveston. | ||
| Well, I think the president's overall approach to governance has been to put America first. | ||
| I don't think that's really at odds with democracy, the democratic process. | ||
| Obviously, we have a Republican form of government in this country, and the president is a product or a success in that democratic process. | ||
| And I don't think he's attempting to circumvent or overturn that. | ||
| I just think he believes that this country should take care of its self first. | ||
| You know, when you get on an airplane, and I get to fly a lot coming back and forth from Tennessee to Washington, they always tell you in the case of an emergency, the oxygen mask is going to drop down. | ||
| If you have young children with you, you should, they don't say you should put their mask on first. | ||
| They said they say you should put your mask. | ||
| And I think that's the way I kind of summarize the whole America first policy. | ||
| If we don't take care of America, if we don't have a healthy and strong country, then we're in less of a position to defend the democratic process, to defend freedom and liberty, free trade, and open markets all around the world. | ||
| The president understands that, and I think his policies reflect that. | ||
| Do you think his actions, especially if Venezuela or Greenland or whatever, do they fall into the American First umbrella in some cases? | ||
| I think so. | ||
| I think the president, in the case of Nicholas Maduro, I think he's bringing a thug, a criminal, a international narco-terrorist to justice. | ||
| I think the way that he went about it is probably appropriate because Maduro is going to get a chance to stand trial and get American justice. | ||
| Some of the president's predecessors would have just taken him out, if you will. | ||
| And I think this is probably a more elegant way to do this and to give Maduro a chance and give the United States a chance to make its case against Maduro, who's been responsible through his trafficking and facilitation of the trafficking of drugs. | ||
| He's been responsible for the death of literally hundreds of thousands of Americans over the many years that the Maduro and predecessor regime were in place. | ||
| This is Roger. | ||
| Roger in North Carolina, Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Thank you, Pedro. | ||
| I have three quick points I'd like to make, if I may. | ||
| Number one, this investigation of Chairman Powell, we all know, everybody knows, that it's just because President Trump wants him to drop the interest rates. | ||
| Point number two, if they're so interested in the cost overrun of that building that Powell's doing, but they don't seem to be interested at all in all that rebuilding that the president is doing in the White House. | ||
|
unidentified
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He's laying gold all over the White House. | |
| He's putting marble floors in the bathrooms and the hallways all over the place. | ||
| Congress is not interested. | ||
|
unidentified
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Don't seem interested in that. | |
| Point number three, seems like the Congress is just ceding all its authority to the president. | ||
|
unidentified
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They're letting him do things like rename the Kennedy Center when the law says that it's the Congress's role to do that. | |
| They're letting him dismiss like the U.S.AID when they said Congress only can do that. | ||
| They're letting him do this War Powers Act. | ||
|
unidentified
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So when are you guys going to stand up and do your job? | |
| Okay, Roger, there in North Carolina. | ||
| Well, I think I would start with the Powell investigation. | ||
| The truth is we don't know, and that's the way it always is, is the Justice Department doesn't disclose or talk about these investigations. | ||
| We only know about the investigation here because Chairman Powell himself reported that came forward. | ||
| And the motives for that, I think, will ultimately become clear, perhaps, or maybe not. | ||
| But, you know, investigating to make sure that the taxpayers of this country haven't been defrauded or mistreated in some way, I think is always an appropriate thing to do. | ||
| With respect to the White House, the President has significant latitude, and it's my understanding, and again, we'll see this as it unfolds, but that project is being funded by third-party private contributions to assist in the development of additional space at the White House. | ||
| And, you know, throughout the history, if you study the history of the White House, it has not been a static place. | ||
| We've been in a period when very few changes have relatively been made at the White House. | ||
| The President is attempting to enlarge the space so that he can more appropriately do the job he is doing. | ||
| And he's made the case for that, and I think he has significant latitude. | ||
| The process of getting that approved and having input from third parties, I think, is underway, and I think we'll see that unfold. | ||
| And then with respect to Congress and, you know, the prerogative of Congress, just this week we passed the appropriations bills for the current fiscal year, albeit late. | ||
| And Congress is asserting its control with respect to things like U.S. aid and other programs through the budgeting process, which is the way that that was intended to be done. | ||
| So I don't think Congress has ceded its authority. | ||
| President Trump is, I think, in a proactive way leading and signaling what he wants to see happen. | ||
| But ultimately, Congress does have a say in implementing those programs for the long term. | ||
| To that last point, what's your sense of the track that the House is in and perhaps the Senate on passing these appropriations bills to avoid another partial shutdown January 30th? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Well, we just passed another of those appropriations bills this week. | ||
| So I think we are moving in the right direction. | ||
| The House is nearing the two-thirds mark. | ||
| We've got a couple more weeks to get our work done. | ||
| I think the plan is to try to wind it up here well in advance of the deadline, the current deadline looming at the end of the month. | ||
| And so far, those bills have been passing in a broadly bipartisan way. | ||
| So I think we're on good track to get the job done. | ||
| I hope the Senate comes along. | ||
| Senate is notorious for dragging its feet. | ||
| You know, we've sent this past year, we sent over 400 bills over to the Senate. | ||
| They've got to get off their butts and get in action and start doing the work they're supposed to do. | ||
| We've sent them a lot of good legislation from the House, and we need the Senate to take action. | ||
| And we hope that they don't have the same problem that they did in the fall when we had the Schumer shutdown. | ||
| We hope that they will get the job done and fund the U.S. government and that we don't see another shutdown. | ||
| Martin is in Ohio, Independent Line. | ||
| Hi. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hello. | |
| Thanks for having me on. | ||
| A couple of things. | ||
| I'm an independent, but I usually vote Democrat. | ||
| Anyways, this DOJ is a joke. | ||
| I mean, full stop. | ||
| I don't have to go into that. | ||
| But in terms of the interest rates, Trump has asked for 75 BIPS, 100 BIPs, bringing down the interest rates. | ||
| That doesn't mean that the long end will not go up. | ||
| So he doesn't understand how it works. | ||
| If you reduce the interest rate, the short end, it will affect your short end. | ||
| It's not going to affect 30-year mortgages if the bond don't think, the bond market doesn't think that that's right. | ||
| Secondly, inflation in 2022. | ||
| Yes, it went to 9%. | ||
| It's nowhere near what it was in the 70s. | ||
| And your guest is a little bit older than me, so he should know that. | ||
| But my question for him is this. | ||
| If it was just about Biden inflation, which that was partially it, why did the rest of the world have inflation, some of it way more than us? | ||
| Because it was a COVID supply chain problem. | ||
| It wasn't just Biden and Trump won spending. | ||
| That contributed to it, but it was a supply chain. | ||
| It would have happened no matter what because of the COVID pandemic and the supply chain. | ||
| Martin, thank you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Well, I think the caller is right to an extent that there were factors that were driving this. | ||
| However, if you recall, and I was here at the time, and I lived through the inflation of the 70s, so I do have a familiarity with that. | ||
| We neared 10% inflation under Biden. | ||
| It got slightly higher than that in the late 70s, early 80s. | ||
| I think it inched above 10% at one point there. | ||
| But this inflation for my adult lifetime, as high as it's ever been since I was a senior in high school. | ||
| And so a very momentous thing. | ||
| And many of us, and I was questioning the Fed chair and the Treasury Secretary Yellen at the time when the Biden administration was proposing trillions of additional spending at the time that it was very obvious that the economy had too much stimulus in it and was going to overheat. | ||
| And with respect to the rest of the world, it is not an inescapable thing that we had to experience what the rest of the world might. | ||
| We could have avoided the hyper, the significant inflation that was occasioned by the Biden spending plans. | ||
| And of course, all that spending got added to the national debt. | ||
| So a big part of the reason that we've seen our debt balloon to now $38.5 trillion is because of the unnecessary spending that was a part of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which actually ended up being a stimulus for inflation in the country. | ||
| Many of us foresaw what was going to happen when Biden came into office and started pushing spending. | ||
| And so I would submit to you, there might have been an inflationary effect, but it would not have been as severe as it was. | ||
| It would not have been as long-lasting as it is going to be. | ||
| President Trump is like the fireman. | ||
| He's on the scene. | ||
| The fire has now been contained, but it's not fully put out. | ||
| It will take some time to do that. | ||
| And Democrats now seem to be determined to blame the president for the fire that they set. | ||
| And that's pretty rich when the arsonist wants to blame the fireman who's come to the fire to put it out. | ||
| You serve on financial services. | ||
| The caller had brought up interest rates. | ||
| The president floated this idea of a 10% cap on credit card interest. | ||
| What do you think about that idea, honestly? | ||
| Well, I think one of the things the caller said that's right is that ultimately interest rates are set by market conditions. | ||
| And so I'm not a big favor of putting in caps. | ||
| Again, I think the president is very good at kind of talking these issues. | ||
| And so, you know, his talk hopefully will beat out a little of exuberance in the market, perhaps. | ||
| Credit card interest rates are high. | ||
| Anyone who has credit card debt knows that. | ||
| And so I think the president's kind of jawboning that issue a little bit to try and encourage the market to work more effectively. | ||
| But ultimately, markets are going to determine interest rates. | ||
| Ultimately, what we want is a competitive marketplace that will drive interest rates to their market clearing rates, and that's what we want. | ||
| That sentiment was reflected by Senator Tom Tullis on the Senate floor yesterday. | ||
| I want to play a little bit of what he had to say, get your reaction to it. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Anyone who thinks that President Trump adopting Elizabeth Warren's idea on capping credit card interest rates, it is literally what the president said over the past week. | ||
| It's not the conservative that I thought they were. | ||
| Anybody that thinks this is a good idea will not speak truth to this president to say you can't do that. | ||
| If you want to unbank or underbank people, then not allow interest rates to be set based on the risk. | ||
| And you'll see what will happen. | ||
| The president and Elizabeth Warren on the same idea. | ||
| He's reacting to that. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
| Well, again, I think the president talks about these things to try to encourage movement in a certain direction. | ||
| The example I would give would be NATO spending, of all things, NATO spending on defense. | ||
| When the President first started talking about this during his first term, everyone thought the way that he went about it was maybe provocative or frightening, you know, some suggesting that he was saying that we might leave NATO. | ||
| But ultimately, the President's rhetoric has led to the exact outcome that he was encouraging, which is increased defense spending. | ||
| The European nations members, our fellow members of NATO stepping up to the plate. | ||
| The president was right. | ||
| That was really underscored when Russia invaded Ukraine, that Europe was unprepared. | ||
| And so the president, I think, in this case, is trying to find ways to relieve pressure on the American consumer. | ||
| And I think that's a good thing. | ||
| Tennessee Republican John Rose with us. | ||
| Let's hear from Rob. | ||
| Rob joins us from California. | ||
| Republican line. | ||
| You're on. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Rob. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hello. | |
| Go ahead. | ||
| You're on, please. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
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I commend you. | |
| You get it. | ||
| The only problem is the Republicans need to share, like you're doing this morning, more places ongoing to educate the public what happened to the economy when the Biden administration was on. | ||
| Those four years went up almost 30 percent. | ||
| I'm an entrepreneur. | ||
| And my materials and things went up over 30 percent. | ||
| That's a third, okay? | ||
| That's damaging. | ||
| Eggs and everything went huge. | ||
| Gasoline went up to $5.80 out here in California. | ||
| It's destroyed our economy. | ||
| And we still haven't dug out of it. | ||
| You guys need to educate the people more than ever. | ||
| And the other thing, 50% tariff, though, on steel is too high. | ||
| Please tell the president we got to back that off because steel buildings and things like that, we can't absorb the 50% steel tariff. | ||
| I know he's trying to protect the steel industry, but 50% is out of hand. | ||
| And the credit cards at 10% or 15%, that's the way it should be because it used to be called usury when you hit 25%. | ||
| And now to bring it down to 10, 15%, President's right on target. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Thanks, Colin. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Rob, thank you. | ||
| Well, I think the caller is right. | ||
| And it's always necessary to be kind of informing and educating the American populace. | ||
| And, of course, hopefully they're educating themselves. | ||
| You know, the ultimate antidote for inflation is productivity. | ||
| And I think if we look at the policies of the Biden administration, they spent too much money. | ||
| Their policies and regulatory approach were restricting production. | ||