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Funding Crisis Update
00:14:49
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unidentified
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Of the partial government shutdown and guidance for federal workers from the Office of Personnel Management. | |
| Then Eric Pratt of Gun Owners of America talks about the response by the Trump administration to the shooting of Alex Predi in Minnesota and Second Amendment concerns. | ||
| And Omar Nuraldin with the government watchdog group Common Cause on the administration's push to obtain private voter data. | ||
| Washington Journal starts now. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| It's Saturday, January 31st. | ||
| We begin the weekend in a partial government shutdown. | ||
| Last night, the Senate passed a compromise funding measure, but the House would have to vote on that same version, and they're in recess until Monday. | ||
| The sticking point is immigration enforcement reforms. | ||
| The protests against ICE continue in Minneapolis and other cities as the administration attempts to de-escalate in the wake of Alex Predi's killing a week ago today. | ||
| The DOJ has opened a civil investigation into his death. | ||
| In other news, President Trump announced Kevin Warsh as his pick for the next Fed chair. | ||
| And the FBI raided the Fulton County Election Hub in Georgia, seizing records and ballots from the 2020 election. | ||
| We're asking you for your top news story of the week. | ||
| There's lots to talk about, so let's keep it to news that happened this week. | ||
| Here are the numbers. | ||
| Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can send a text to 202-748-8003, include your first name in your city-state, and you can reach us on social media, facebook.com slash C-SPAN and X at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Welcome to today's Washington Journal. | ||
| We will start with a reporter to update us on the partial government shutdown. | ||
| And joining us is Jory Heckman, Senior Reporter at Federal News Network. | ||
| Welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, Mamie, great to be here. | |
| Okay, so funding for a handful of agencies has officially lapsed as of midnight last night. | ||
| So what does this mean? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, a lot to break down here. | |
| The funding bills that the Senate passed last night, this is a five-bill package that covers the DOD. | ||
| It covers the State Department. | ||
| It covers transportation, education, HUD, health and human services, Treasury, and some other agencies as well. | ||
| But that's the main focus of those. | ||
| The Senate did pass that bill, and they passed a two-week continuing resolution for DHS. | ||
| It would remain at current funding levels for those two weeks. | ||
| And the good news is the Senate did reach that. | ||
| They passed that measure. | ||
| However, the House is expected to come back Monday, late in the day, around 6.30. | ||
| And so until that happens, until they actually pass the Senate measure, the partial shutdown will continue. | ||
| So what does that mean for federal employees? | ||
|
unidentified
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It's kind of an odd situation. | |
| There have been short-term shutdowns before. | ||
| What this means for impacted federal employees at these agencies is that they will still show up on Monday for the shutdown preparations. | ||
| They'll have about a half day to do all of that work. | ||
| The out-of-office emails, for example, assigning work to people who would be continuing to work during a shutdown for any length. | ||
| But assuming everything goes as scheduled here, that federal employees would show up Monday morning. | ||
| Later in the day, the House would pass this funding package. | ||
| Federal employees would then go to work on Tuesday like nothing ever happened. | ||
| So they do still have to show up Monday morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Under any shutdown, they have about a half day to go through the procedures of getting prepared for a shutdown. | |
| So yes, They're getting messages from their agencies on specifics beyond that, but that is the general principle. | ||
| Now, what has OMB said about this? | ||
| This is the Office of Management and Budget. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right, so OMB, they are the folks that sent the notice to agencies late in the day Friday saying that shutdown procedures should proceed. | |
| Whenever there's the possibility of a government shutdown looming, they prep agencies in the days leading up to that. | ||
| And what we saw from OMB is that they expect this to be a short-term shutdown. | ||
| They're queuing to agencies to not prepare for the long term here. | ||
| It's worth pointing out that we are in the middle of the filing season for the IRS. | ||
| They have some contingencies in place as well. | ||
| They have told their employees that they should continue to show up. | ||
| If there's a longer shutdown, that they have funding set aside to keep everything funded through February the 7th. | ||
| And when you say shutdown procedures, give us an idea of what that would entail for an agency. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right, so that's things as simple as sending an out-of-office email saying, sorry, I'm not answering my email right now. | |
| Same thing for the phone, handing work off to employees that will be working throughout the shutdown. | ||
| If this is an employee that is furloughed, things of that nature. | ||
| And I guess they would be pretty good at that because they have gone through this a couple of times. | ||
|
unidentified
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They have had practice, and especially federal employees who have been at their jobs for a while, they are familiar with the procedures. | |
| All right, that's Jory Heckman, senior reporter, Federal News Network. | ||
| Thanks so much for joining us today. | ||
| And stay warm. | ||
| We will take your call shortly, but first take a look at Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. | ||
| Here he is last night talking about the passage of funding legislation and ICE reforms that Democrats are negotiating now. | ||
| Undeterred, we held our ground and made clear our demand. | ||
| The Senate must separate the Homeland Securities bill out of the large appropriations bill and allow this chamber to make real changes to overhaul ICE and to end the violence. | ||
| Some may have thought they could ignore us, confident the news cycle would change and the public outrage would fade. | ||
| Those people were wrong. | ||
| They underestimated our resolve. | ||
| They dismissed our unity. | ||
| Yesterday, Republicans tried once more to push forward the full funding package through the Senate with zero ICE reforms. | ||
| Democrats unanimously voted no. | ||
| We were strong and we're united. | ||
| With our votes, we helped deliver the message of change on behalf of millions and millions of Americans who have risen up and supported their neighbors and who have implored their government to stop tormenting their communities. | ||
| Let me be clear. | ||
| Because of Democratic unity, the Senate was forced to change course. | ||
| Republicans had to negotiate with us to pass any bill. | ||
| They had to listen to the American people calling out for change. | ||
| The bottom line, the agreement we reached today did precisely what Democrats wanted. | ||
| It separated DHS from the other funding bills so we can overhaul DHS to rein in ICE and end the violence. | ||
| Now, there are two steps to this whole process. | ||
| First, separate the bills, which gave us the ability to fund 96% of the government while letting us now focus on overhauling the DHS bill. | ||
| That was step one. | ||
| Step two is now drafting strong, common sense legislation that reigns in ICE and ends the violence. | ||
| I want my colleagues to listen closely. | ||
| I want my Republican colleagues to listen closely. | ||
| Senate Democrats will not support a DHS bill unless it rains in ICE and ends the violence. | ||
| That was Chuck Schumer. | ||
| We're getting your top news story of the week. | ||
| Now, that funding bill that did pass is different from what the House passed, so they would have to pass it. | ||
| And here is what the top Democrat in the House said, Hakeem Jeffries, Minority Leader. | ||
| He put this out on X yesterday at 7:43 p.m. | ||
| He said this. | ||
| The House Democratic Caucus will evaluate the spending legislation passed by the Senate on its merits and then decide how to proceed legislatively. | ||
| Our commitment is to protect the health, safety, and economic well-being of the American people at all times. | ||
| The cost of living is way too high. | ||
| Health care is being ripped away from millions of Americans. | ||
| And the Department of Homeland Security is in need of dramatic reform. | ||
| ICE is out of control, and they must be compelled to conduct themselves like every other professional law enforcement agency in the country. | ||
| Taxpayer dollars should be used to address the affordability crisis ravaging the country, not brutalize and kill American citizens. | ||
| The Trump administration must set forth an ironclad path that dramatically reforms ICE and other DHS agencies that the American people know have become lawless and heavy-handed. | ||
| It is in the best interest of the country that this is done by the Congress. | ||
| The Congress reconvenes on Monday evening and legislation is brought to the House floor. | ||
| That was a statement by Hakeem Jeffries. | ||
| Our numbers are Democrats 202-748-8000, Republicans 202-748-8001, and Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| We're getting your top news story, and we'll start with Bill, a Democrat in Parkersburg, West Virginia. | ||
| Good morning, Bill. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning, and thank you for taking my call. | |
| First Tom Caller. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| I was just calling about how quickly the nurse was died, or the nurse was told it was self-defense. | ||
| Geez, within hours of this happening, the government was acting in self-defense. | ||
| I'm a lawyer. | ||
| I represent people. | ||
| I've raised the self-defense claim. | ||
| And there is no way that you can say it's self-defense in an hour of somebody being killed or with hours of somebody being killed. | ||
| And I'm so disappointed. | ||
| Sorry that our government is lying to us. | ||
| And think of the novel 1984 when one of the final things is saying when the government finally convinces you you can't believe what you saw and heard they want. | ||
| And I just encourage people to not, I hate to say this. | ||
| It probably hasn't happened since the Vietnam War. | ||
| I don't trust what the government tells you. | ||
| Trust your own eyes and trust what you hear. | ||
| So thank you for taking my comments. | ||
| All right, Bill, and thanks for joining us this morning. | ||
| This is Ray in Ithaca, New York, a Republican. | ||
| Good morning, Ray. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm just calling you the government shutdown. | |
| I think that is the top story. | ||
| I'm glad that the Senate was able to come up with this tentative plan that we hope that the House can pass. | ||
| But the problem is I don't understand what the Democrats are asking, how we're not going to have a long-term shutdown soon because the president's not going to defund ICE, certainly not going to abolish ICE. | ||
| And I just think the demands are unreasonable. | ||
| And I think the Democrats are willing to risk, I think, the midterms where they were looking like they were going to win to Bill Lee Lewis. | ||
| The health care was a popular issue for him. | ||
| And the last shutdown, I don't think this is going to be. | ||
| So, Ray, this is what the Democrats are asking for. | ||
| They're actually not asking for, in this negotiation, as far as right now, they're not asking for defunding ICE or shutting it down. | ||
| So here it is. | ||
| They want to do this. | ||
| And then I want you to tell me, Ray, what you think is reasonable. | ||
| Ending roving patrols, tightening the rules on warrants and requiring ICE to coordinate with local authorities. | ||
| Number two, enforce accountability and a uniform code of conduct. | ||
| And finally, require agents to take masks off, wear body cameras, and carry ID. | ||
| What do you think of those? | ||
| Well, number three, they can't take the masks off because these men are getting doxed. | ||
| Their families get threatened. | ||
| That's off the table as far as I'm concerned. | ||
| Body cameras and carry ID, I can certainly live with that. | ||
| Forcing accountability and uniform code, I can deal with that. | ||
| You'll have to give me the first one again. | ||
| The roving patrols and then tightening the rules on warrants. | ||
| I think the warrant part needs to stay the same. | ||
| The roving patrols, I think that there can be some type of adjustment. | ||
| I do think we need to bring down the number of troops and things, say, in Minneapolis, to kind of calm down the tensions. | ||
| But again, a couple of these things, like taking off the mask where these men are getting threatened, their families are getting threatened. | ||
| I just think that's off the table as far as I'm concerned, as far as most people that I talk to, at least on the Republican side, and actually, quite frankly, most independents and most Democrat friends I have. | ||
| I live in a very liberal town, so I have a lot of friends that are Democrats. | ||
| And I don't think they want, most people seem to agree with me that they need the masks just because of all the doxing. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Let's hear from Mike, Independent, Fairbanks, Alaska. | ||
| Good morning, Mike. | ||
| Good morning, Mimi. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| And good morning, America, and all my friends in America and patriots. | ||
| Mimi, I'll touch on a few points here. | ||
| Masks are necessary because we have a new breed of evil protesters. | ||
| These are Antiqua super soldiers. | ||
| It's all over the internet, especially Alex Jones on InfoWars.com. | ||
| That's such an important channel. | ||
|
Drawdown and Border Threats
00:04:22
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| He's one of the most accurate journalists on the planet, and everybody should go to him for information, one of your sources anyway. | ||
| But the masks, too bad. | ||
| People are spinning on our hardworking officers over there that put their lives on the line, period. | ||
| They're getting spit on. | ||
| So I would wear a mask, too. | ||
| If you try to take my mask off, you're going to jail. | ||
| You're going to prison, and you're going to pay for it. | ||
| And you're going to be an example. | ||
| And I think Tom Holman is doing a good job. | ||
| We need to get the twinkle toes out of our government that aren't moving. | ||
| We have people in the Department of Justice that are sitting on their hands with a lot of evidence that we need to prosecute. | ||
| We need to process, and we need transparency. | ||
| Need to show America what we're doing because nobody trusts Washington. | ||
| In fact, people call it Washing scum. | ||
| And I would like to reverse that. | ||
| I love my president. | ||
| He's the best president we ever had. | ||
| He's the next thing to the man that walked on water. | ||
| And when you look at what they did at J6, the DC police actually killed people there. | ||
| They weren't killed by the protesters. | ||
| So, Mike, not to get you off the topic, but when you say that Alex Jones InfoWars is a trusted news source for you, do you also believe what he said about the Sandy Hook shooting being a hoax and being staged? | ||
| Well, it was taken out of context. | ||
| If you look at that, he edited his statements. | ||
| Well, Mimi, if I could explain myself, he did make a mistake, but he admitted it and he apologized. | ||
| That's after he was taken to court, Mike, and prosecuted. | ||
| Okay, but you did mention Tom Holman. | ||
| Let's take a look at what he said on Thursday. | ||
| He had a news conference in Minneapolis. | ||
| Here he is. | ||
| Well, look, the Board of Patrol, last 40 years under Joe Biden, we had an open border where 10,000, 12,000 people a day are coming across the border. | ||
| Board of Patrol got overwhelmed, which means we sent thousands of ICE agents down there to help deal with that humanitarian crisis, help secure the border. | ||
| Now we have millions of people released in this nation, many unvetted. | ||
| Now we've got to find them. | ||
| Before the big, beautiful bill, we had a total of just under 5,000 deportation officers to look for millions of people, many in public safety threats. | ||
| So yes, we needed Board of Patrol to come and help on our mission now. | ||
| And the reason for the massive deployment is because of threats, because of the violence. | ||
| Our officers need to be protected. | ||
| If I'm on an operation arrest team, I'm going to a house, I've got to be busy with that guy, the dangerous guy, and I can't keep looking over my shoulder at what's happening outside the house. | ||
| So we brought extra resources in to provide that security. | ||
| And as I said, as we drill down in these great agreements we got, this great understanding we have means less. | ||
| So we can draw down those resources. | ||
| When the violence decreases, we can draw down those resources. | ||
| But based on the discussions I've had with the governor and the AG, we can start drawing down those resources as far as those looking for public safety threats being released and doing it in jail with much less people, much less people. | ||
| So the drawdown is going to happen based on these agreements. | ||
| But the drawdown can happen even more if the hateful rhetoric and the impediment inference will stop. | ||
| So Border Patrol, I was a Board of Patrol agent. | ||
| These men and women are patriots. | ||
| God bless them. | ||
| They're here to help us. | ||
| And the drawdown will come soon, depending on when this actually, I see this in play. | ||
| But the agreements have alone is going to cause that significant drawdown. | ||
| And that press conference is on our website in its entirety, c-span.org. | ||
| If you missed it on Thursday, here's Ryan, Democrat, New Orleans, Louisiana. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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I got two things to say, Mimi. | |
| I have to say that the southern states thinks God's on their side, but he's not. | ||
|
Put Shade On Colorado
00:14:34
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unidentified
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And he's going to show that President Trump was one of the, he's embarrassing Trump. | |
| Now, he's going to let Trump embarrass and shame himself now. | ||
| And I'm not for, I'm not for the immigration. | ||
| I'm not for you have to be here legal, you know. | ||
| But you have a fraction of the people in America that don't want to do the work. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| And one last thing, you have some beautiful clear patch rise. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Here's Tom in Manchester, Kentucky, Republican. | ||
| Tom, what's your top news story of the week? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, first and foremost, ma'am, I'd like to make my first comment real brief. | |
| I don't trust Chuck Sumer to carry goods to a hog. | ||
| And I mean, them Democrats, now, I'm a 76-year-old man, first-time caller. | ||
| I watch your show. | ||
| It's kind of like watching SpongeBob. | ||
| And be honest with you. | ||
| And I'm a Vietnam veteran and a former police officer. | ||
| What's going on today in their land is I never thought in my lifetime I'd ever see. | ||
| When I was a police officer, somebody spit on me. | ||
| They went to the emergency room and then to jail. | ||
| Now, these guys that's out there trying to clean their country up, the Democrats made the mess up. | ||
| The Democrats and some Republicans. | ||
| I'm not, I'm, you know, like it's my first time to call you to be molested. | ||
| The people today that's called in there, I don't know what they're going to do when Trump's out of office. | ||
| Who are they going to whine and cry about then? | ||
| This beats anything I believe I've ever seen in my life. | ||
| I spent 23 months in Vietnam, and my first encounter with a protester was in Seattle, Washington on the way back home on my second tour. | ||
| Standing there, one of them had a big spot around his eye tattoo, looked like old Spot, the dog. | ||
| But my main thing is, first I feel like this, that first thing police need to clean up is Washington, D.C. | ||
| Now, they keep bringing up this January 6th insurrection thing. | ||
| This is my personal feelings, and the FBI can come see me if they want to. | ||
| That's all right. | ||
| First mistake they made on that, they didn't burn that house down up there. | ||
| Absolutely put it nicely. | ||
| All right, Tom, let's talk to Russell, San Jose, California, Democrat. | ||
| You're on the air, Russell. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning, America. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| So my story of the week would be the fact that I believe that all these issues that they're putting up about the two people that got killed is kind of a smokescreen. | ||
| And what I mean by that is I'm African American. | ||
| If I go and I see some police officers and I kick their taillight or I spit on them or like the lady, you know, 10 o'clock in the daytime, you got three kids. | ||
| What are you doing there? | ||
| Okay, we got more bigger issues. | ||
| So, you know, when you put yourself in a situation, if I go out there doing something like that, I should expect to get shot. | ||
| Now, as far as the civil rights, I remember when I was like four years old, my mom, we were walking to Jesse Jackson's church, and my mom was getting bit by police dogs. | ||
| So a lot of people forget that a lot of these immigrants would not be here if it wasn't for civil rights. | ||
| And here's my last thing: a lot of the immigrants that are in this country right now, they treat Americans like dirt. | ||
| That's what people don't really talk about. | ||
| They don't want to assimilate. | ||
| They want to use their own language. | ||
| They want to talk about Surreal law. | ||
| They want to steal from the government. | ||
| And, you know, I believe this. | ||
| The law is the laws of law. | ||
| So if we remove these people, and one more thing, people say, well, they work so hard. | ||
| Okay, here's the deal. | ||
| If you don't like the way that we have it in America and you work so hard, why don't you go to wherever you came from and work hard at fixing your country? | ||
| Because the people in America, they can't afford to buy food. | ||
| The grocery store is expensive. | ||
| They can't pay their PGE. | ||
| I can go on and on and on and on. | ||
| And again, I'm just a regular blue-collar guy that took care of my family, paid my bills. | ||
| I don't really care about the name calling the Democrats, the Republican. | ||
| If you don't like the way it is in America, change the law, period. | ||
| Vote. | ||
| And if you don't vote, and that's the reason why a lot of people don't even notice it. | ||
| Black people stand down. | ||
| We are not in those marches like we used to be. | ||
| We're not protesting anything because we're tired of being bullied like bullet bags for people. | ||
| We're not going to do anything. | ||
| We're going to sit our butt at home and let everything play out because this is not our fight. | ||
| And that's all I got to say. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And this is Mike, Independent, Illinois. | ||
| Good morning, Mike. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Hey, a few top stories. | ||
| The first one is Minnesota. | ||
| Okay, the three-legged stool might have accomplished their goal. | ||
| Okay, I'll explain it in a second. | ||
| But their goal was to put shade on Second Amendments, put shade on warrants, put shade on taking kids from parents that are getting deported, and putting shade on investigations. | ||
| And the three-legged stool is ICE, which is extraction team for the invaders, the big government, which is ICE, the big media, and then the Curavana of paid demonstrators. | ||
| These are all accomplishing exactly what they were set out to do. | ||
| And also, Trump not mentioning his, as he's patting himself on the back, the other meeting, without taking any questions, we find out that bankruptcies are up 20% since last year. | ||
| Mom and pop businesses are at record high bankruptcies, and he's patting himself on the back. | ||
| The tortilla can bend at the knees, the tortilla can bend at the waist, and it also can reach over and pat itself on the back nonstop. | ||
| And Mike, you mentioned the Second Amendment. | ||
| We do have a segment coming up on this program on the Second Amendment and gun rights, and we've got Gun Owners of America, senior VP, coming in to talk about that and take your calls. | ||
| Let's hear from Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry. | ||
| He was at the U.S. Conference of Mayors winter meeting here in D.C., and he talked on Thursday. | ||
| I see your faces on TV. | ||
| I feel the support from across the entire country. | ||
| And we recognize that one great American city is experiencing an invasion. | ||
| That is an invasion on our democracy, on our republic, and on each and every one of us. | ||
| And the fact that you all are standing up means the world. | ||
| Never in a million years did I think that we would be in this place where troops and federal agents by the thousands have been deployed on a great American city. | ||
| where the Department of Justice is used as a weapon to silence dissent, where the very foundational principles of our democracy and of our republic are questioned. | ||
| You know, I didn't take this job to get into the business of defending democracy. | ||
| I did because being a mayor has always been my dream job. | ||
| There's great honor in filling potholes. | ||
| It is noble to keep people safe and to build affordable housing. | ||
| That work which we do every single day is foundational to the principles of our republic. | ||
| And all the same, we find ourselves in a different position right now. | ||
| We are on the front lines of a very important battle. | ||
| And it's important that we aren't silenced, that we aren't put down. | ||
| This is not a time to bend our heads in despair or out of fear that we may be next. | ||
| Because if we do not speak up, if we do not step out, it will be your city that is next. | ||
| What's your top news story of the week? | ||
| Let's talk to Alice in Colorado, who's a Republican. | ||
| Hi, Alice. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hi, Greta. | |
| I did not vote for Donald Trump, but I am a Republican, and I feel very embarrassed that I did not vote for him. | ||
| The reason I didn't is because there was so much hate toward him, and I was afraid this would happen. | ||
| So I'm calling about masks. | ||
| I believe people that are the ICE should be able to wear the masks because many of the undocumented people that are criminals, and even the ones that aren't, they are not fully vaccinated. | ||
| And we've had an outbreak of measles in South Carolina. | ||
| We've had, I worked in a school in a very low-income place in Aurora, Colorado. | ||
| And we've stopped being able to bring in treats. | ||
| The parents could bring in treats that were not packaged. | ||
| They could not be homemade because one of the grandparents had hepatitis. | ||
| It is terrible that's what's happening. | ||
| But I also know that I have immigrant people, non-undocumented people who are shoveling my walks where I live and doing really hard work. | ||
| And they're wonderful. | ||
| I've had all kinds of people when I've been teaching. | ||
| And it's terrible that people can't get along. | ||
| However, I think the federal law takes precedence over local law. | ||
| And so I think that it's horrible that Minneapolis has not supported the federal government. | ||
| Yes, we should be getting the people that are in jail for terrible, terrible crimes brought back to their country. | ||
| But my mother and father taught me not to go into large mobs. | ||
| Mobs cause problems. | ||
| And even though we have the right to speak up, I think we could speak up in a more civil way. | ||
| I think Minneapolis has been, it's been so dishonorable. | ||
| So thank you so much. | ||
| All right, Alice. | ||
| Steve is next. | ||
| Democrat, Sanford, North Carolina. | ||
| Good morning, Mimi. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| First off, I would like to make a comment, and then I will talk about my topic of the week. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay. | |
| My first comment is, and I'd appreciate it if you would do this, is, and I know this is probably going to make a lot of people mad, but it's something needs to be said. | ||
| I wish you'd show the clip of Trump at one of his rallies saying he loves stupid people. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay? | |
| That sums up a lot of this. | ||
| Now, I want to talk about, I read an article yesterday. | ||
|
unidentified
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I didn't know this till yesterday. | |
| In March of 2025, Donald Trump abolished the bad cop website. | ||
| If you had been a cop and had been fired for some wrongful doing, you were put on that. | ||
| And he took that down. | ||
| So that might just explain why the mask. | ||
| Where's that article, Steve? | ||
| I looked it up. | ||
| I read it and something, and then I looked it up, and it said, yes, in March of 2025, Donald Trump abolished the bad cop website. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay? | |
| Now, that explains why those guys are masked, because if they were identified, you know exactly where they were coming from. | ||
| Okay, Steve, Steve. | ||
| This is our producer found it. | ||
| So it's an Axios, and it says this, the headline. | ||
| Trump orders database on federal police misconduct to close. | ||
| That is dated February 20th, 2025. | ||
| And it says this. | ||
| It was first reported in the Post. | ||
| It ends the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database. | ||
| It said that it had improved public safety by preventing bad officers from jumping from agency to agency. | ||
| A note on the database on the Department of Justice's website says Trump revoked an executive order signed by then President Biden, and the database will be decommissioned. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Exactly. | ||
| Okay, so now it's very likely that a lot of these ICE agents were coming from that list. | ||
| Now, here's a couple things that I have noticed with these ICE agents. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| I have seen them on video with a man being held down, okay, by five ACE agents, being kneaded in the face. | ||
| And he stopped when he looked around and saw he was being filmed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| I saw another guy being held down by five agents, being punched continuously in the face. | ||
| I saw a woman who's telling them I'm disabled, be drugged out of her car. | ||
| And to get her out, they sliced the woman's seatbelt. | ||
| So how much is that going to cost her? | ||
| I have seen people of people being held down, being pepper sprayed point blank in their face. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay? | |
| Now, if you're a person and you think that is okay, it's not okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay? | |
| So I just, I don't get it. | ||
| So you do. | ||
| Greg in Grand Junction, Colorado, Independent Line. | ||
| What's your top news story of the week? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I want to talk about Alex Predi and his actions. | |
| There was a recent news report this week. | ||
|
Alex Predi Confrontation
00:05:46
|
||
|
unidentified
|
It was through the BBC, actually, that 11 days before he was in a confrontation with ICE that resulted in his death, he was in another confrontation with them as well. | |
| And the clips show him fighting ICE officers, spinning at them, and then when they tried to drive away in their SUV, he kicked out their rear taillight. | ||
| And then they got out of the car and they subdued him. | ||
| It's possible that he's two things at the same time. | ||
| He's represented in the liberal media as being this Christ-like ICU nurse that works for the VA and helps veterans. | ||
| And that may be true. | ||
| But he's also a violent protester as well, as demonstrated in that news report. | ||
| And the entire premise of the Democrats' meme about shutting down the government because ICE is violent and they've killed these two beautiful peaceful protesters is nothing more than an absolute lie. | ||
| Just like most of the things that your Democrat callers say when they call them on the Democrat line and on half of the Independence line, Democrats are misinformed. | ||
| Alex Predty was a criminal. | ||
| He came out. | ||
| He was armed looking for trouble and he got it. | ||
| He found that trouble. | ||
| But I would compel you, Mimi, and C-STAN to play that clip from the BBC and to show the world what he was really all about. | ||
| He's a violent Antifa member. | ||
| There is the headline in the New York Times. | ||
| We'll put that up on your screen. | ||
| It says videos show Alex Predi in confrontation with agents 11 days before his death, more than a week before federal agents killed Mr. Predi, a Minneapolis nurse. | ||
| Different agents pushed him to the ground and he spit at them and broke a taillight on their SUV. | ||
| This is a response by President Trump on Truth Social. | ||
| He said, This agitator and perhaps insurrectionist Alex Predi's stock has gone way down with the just released video of him screaming and spitting in the face of a very calm and under control ICE officer and then crazily kicking in a new and very expensive government vehicle. | ||
| So hard and violent, in fact, that the taillight broke off in pieces. | ||
| It was quite a display of abuse and anger for all to see. | ||
| Crazed and out of control, the ICE officer was calm and cool, not an easy thing to be under those circumstances. | ||
| That is President Trump. | ||
| There's also this from ABC News. | ||
| ICE claim that a man shattered his skull running into wall triggers tension at a Minnesota hospital. | ||
| It says nurses in Minneapolis doubted federal immigration officers' claims about a Mexican immigrant's severe injuries. | ||
| It says intensive care nurses immediately doubted the word of the federal officers when they arrived at a Minneapolis hospital with a Mexican immigrant who had broken bones in his face and skull. | ||
| ICE agents initially claimed that the man had tried to flee while handcuffed and quote purposefully ran headfirst into a brick wall. | ||
| It says staff members at the medical center determined that could not possibly account for the fractures and bleeding throughout the 31-year-old's brain. | ||
| The nurses said this, quote, it was laughable if there was something to laugh about. | ||
| There was no way this person ran headfirst into a wall. | ||
| Elaine, Olympia, Washington, Republican. | ||
| Good morning, Elaine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I just want to talk about the Predi shooting. | ||
| I'll put out a scenario. | ||
| If you heard someone say, he's got a gun, what would you do? | ||
| You'd either run, hide, or something, but you would think that that gun was about to be fired. | ||
| But if you were a law enforcement officer, you'd think that the person still had the gun. | ||
| And the two shooters, that's exactly what they thought because after the guy said he's got a gun, he retrieved the gun, but he didn't tell the other agents. | ||
| So they thought he still had the gun. | ||
| And so I think that that lends a certain credibility to a reason why they might have shot him, even though he was shot. | ||
| Yep, got it, Elaine. | ||
| And this is the front page of the Washington Post that the Justice Department has opened a civil rights probe of Predi's shooting. | ||
| It says reversal follows widespread criticism. | ||
| Investigation initially was limited to a review by DHS. | ||
| Michael, Sparta, New Jersey, Independent Line, you're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thank you, Price Fan. | |
| I also want to comment on the recent news story about Alex Predi coming out about the incident 11 days earlier. | ||
| If these officers were properly trained, they would have arrested him when he kicked out the taillight. | ||
| And then this later incident would have never happened. | ||
| Nonetheless, I don't think it's kicking out a taillight as a death sentence. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And we got a few comments from Facebook. | ||
|
Potential Preemptive Strikes Against Iran
00:04:21
|
||
| Luis says that his top news story is the arrest of independent journalists by the Justice Department under the direct orders of the president. | ||
| He's talking about the arrest of Don Lemon, former CNN anchor. | ||
| Ryan said, things released in the Epstein files, unbelievable and disturbing. | ||
| And Jeff says, the one that hasn't been mentioned nearly enough, the quote, massive armada in Iran. | ||
| And speaking of Iran, the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, was before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, and he spoke about that military buildup around Iran. | ||
| On the issue of our presence in the region, here's the baseline I want to set for everybody. | ||
| The baseline is this. | ||
| We have 30 to 40,000 American troops stationed across eight or nine facilities in that region. | ||
| All are within the reach, theoretically, not theoretically, in reality, all are within the reach of an array of thousands of Iranian one-way UAVs and Iranian short-term ballistic missiles, short-range ballistic missiles that threaten our troop presence. | ||
| We have to have enough force and power in the region, just on a baseline, to defend against that possibility. | ||
| That at some point, as a result of something, the Iranian regime decides to strike at our troop presence in the region. | ||
| The president always reserves the preemptive defensive option. | ||
| In essence, if we have indications that, in fact, they're going to attack our troops in the region to defend our personnel in the region. | ||
| We also have security agreements, the Defense of Israel Plan and others, that require us to have a force posture in the region to defend against that. | ||
| And so I think it's wise and prudent to have a force posture within the region that could respond and potentially, not necessarily what's going to happen, but if necessary, preemptibly prevent the attack against thousands of American servicemen and other facilities in the region and our allies. | ||
| I hope it doesn't come to that. | ||
| But that's, I think, what you're seeing now: the ability to posture assets in the region to defend against what could be an Iranian threat against our personnel. | ||
| They certainly have the capability to do it because they've amassed thousands and thousands of ballistic missiles that they've built, despite the fact that their economy is collapsing. | ||
| They keep spending money on that. | ||
| And this is an article in Reuters headlined, Iran ready for, quote, fair talks with the U.S., but not on defense capabilities. | ||
| Here's a summary: that Iran rejects U.S. demand to curb missile program. | ||
| U.S. military deployments expand amid tensions, and Trump said he planned to speak with Tehran. | ||
| Turkey offers to facilitate U.S.-Iran dialogue. | ||
| Elaine, Democrat, Norlina, North Carolina, what's your top news story of the week? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I guess I want to talk about Iran. | |
| Elaine, just talk to me on the phone. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Don't listen to your TV. | ||
| You got to turn that down. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hold on. | |
| Can you turn the TV down? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So my priority, because everybody knows about, you know, I've been praying because I am clergy, even though I represent North Carolina. | ||
| My problem, not concern, is Iran. | ||
| That's how everything started as far as missions, Iran. | ||
| So I'm praying that there's intervention because, you know, that could be a catastrophe. | ||
| If he strikes Iran, they strike back. | ||
| It's about human life and civilians on both sides that I really am concerned about, you see. | ||
| And if he strikes Iran, because in their country, he strikes them, then they're going to strike American soil, and that's going to be another problem, you see. | ||
| So I am praying for the situation because there are civilians on each side that had nothing to do with this nuclear weapon. | ||
| So my concern is about the fatality and the fatality and possible casualties, massive casualties that are going to be affected if he strikes Iran. | ||
| That is my concern. | ||
|
Impeachment Talks: Christy Noam
00:02:38
|
||
| Got that? | ||
| And this is the Hill. | ||
| Rubio raises potential for preemptive strikes against Iran. | ||
| Quote, I hope it doesn't come to that. | ||
| And here is Reck in Ackworth, Georgia, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank goodness for C-SPAN. | ||
| It's a chilly day here in Ackworth, Georgia. | ||
| My top story is the impeachment talks of Christy Noam. | ||
| Now, my recollection from my eighth-grade civics class was the House of Representatives have the impeachment and perform that. | ||
| And then if it's voted on, it goes to the Senate for trial. | ||
| Now, I'd like the Democrats to listen to this carefully. | ||
| And I'd like to ask you, Miss, wasn't Maorcus impeached? | ||
| And maybe you can look this up and give me some 30 on this because I'm sure he was. | ||
| Yes, he was. | ||
| That's right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The Democratic-run Senate had no trial. | |
| So I don't know what that means. | ||
| So if the Democrats regain the House, impeach Trump again, and there's a Republican Senate, is there a possibility there wouldn't be a trial on that? | ||
| And I'll listen. | ||
| Maybe you can do some research because I'm confused. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Yes, no, Rick, you're absolutely right. | ||
| The Senate would have to take it up, and a Republican Senate probably would not take up an impeachment of Secretary Noam. | ||
| So here is Representative Ilhan Omar, a Democrat of Minnesota. | ||
| She is one of the Democrats that is calling for Christy Noam to either resign or be impeached. | ||
| And she was having a town hall, and she was assaulted by a protester. | ||
| Here it is. | ||
| ICE could not be reformed. | ||
| It cannot be rehabilitated. | ||
| We must abolish ICE for good. | ||
| And DHS Secretary Kristi Noem must resign or face impeachment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know. | |
| Oh, my God. | ||
| He's bright something on her. | ||
| I need a napkin to know like his nails. | ||
|
Ultimate Power Play
00:03:53
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||
| No, we will continue. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no, no. | |
| Johan, you need to go get checked. | ||
| that's whatever this smells so bad she needs to go get checked I don't know. | ||
| That's what they want. | ||
| Please don't let them know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's not about him, Johan. | |
| Johan, it's not about him. | ||
| It's about your safety. | ||
| No, he sprays something on you. | ||
| You need to go get checked. | ||
| And it smells terrible. | ||
| We're going to keep talking. | ||
| Just give me 10 minutes. | ||
| Just give me 10 minutes. | ||
| I beg you. | ||
| Please don't go back to the show. | ||
| Please don't let them have the show. | ||
| Please don't let them have the show. | ||
| Here is the reality that people like this ugly man don't understand. | ||
| We are Minnesota strong, and we will stay resilient in the face of whatever they might throw at us. | ||
| Everybody settle down. | ||
| I'm going to finish my remarks. | ||
| It is important for me to continue to lead my Democratic colleagues in demanding her resignation. | ||
| And we'll go to Aaron, a Democrat, Edmonds, Washington. | ||
| What's your top news story of the week? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Donald Trump, inside the twisted mind of Donald Trump, now he wants to have ultimate power and control over the Federal Reserve. | |
| It doesn't stop there. | ||
| First, he took ultimate power and control over most Republicans in Washington, D.C., in the Congress and the House. | ||
| He already has ultimate power and control over most of the Republican and most of the governors in the country. | ||
| He even has ultimate power and control over local jurisdictions now. | ||
| It doesn't stop there, though. | ||
| Inside the mind of Donald Trump, that deranged mind of his, he has thoughts about taking over Greenland. | ||
| He wants to be dictator of Canada. | ||
| He's even arresting journalists for filming and documenting what's going on down there over there in Minnesota. | ||
| He won't stop this guy until he also wants to take over Panama. | ||
| But the point is that he's shutting down anybody who has any voice of the dissent in the country. | ||
| Anybody that speaks up against him. | ||
| Anybody that criticizes him. | ||
| Inside Donald Trump's deranged mind. | ||
| He sits around thinking about. | ||
| Got it, Aaron. | ||
| And he did mention the Fed Reserve nominee that was announced yesterday. | ||
| That's Kevin Warsh. | ||
| And this is what Senator Tom Tillis said. | ||
| So he is head of that committee that would have to approve him. | ||
| And this is what Senator Tillis said on X. Kevin Warsh is a qualified nominee with a deep understanding of monetary policy. | ||
| However, the Department of Justice continues to pursue a criminal investigation into Chairman Jerome Powell based on committee testimony that no reasonable person could construe as possessing criminal intent. | ||
|
Al Weaver's Entire Hour
00:03:31
|
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| Protecting the independence of the Federal Reserve from political interference or legal intimidation is non-negotiable. | ||
| My position has not changed. | ||
| I will oppose the confirmation of any Federal Reserve nominee, including for the position of chairman, until the DOJ's inquiry into Chairman Powell is fully and transparently resolved. | ||
| Wayne in Elk Ridge, Maryland, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning, and thanks for C-SPAN. | |
| I've got a question for you specifically. | ||
| Yesterday on your show, you featured Al Weaver. | ||
| He's a staff writer from the Hill, and you discussed a Senate deal to avert a shutdown despite contrary headlines from his own publication. | ||
| Why did C-SPAN highlight a deal that was supposed to happen with the Senate while the HEAL was still reporting articles otherwise? | ||
| What were the articles? | ||
| Yeah, go ahead. | ||
| What was the other article? | ||
|
unidentified
|
One article was the shutdown deal stalls over Graham objection. | |
| That happened the night before your show yesterday. | ||
| Correct. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And we talked about it. | |
| No, but we talked about that, Wayne. | ||
| Senator Graham's. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You did not. | |
| You had Al Weaver on there for an entire hour. | ||
| You didn't. | ||
| Oh, no, no, I'm sorry, you're mistaken. | ||
| Al Weaver was on for a very short amount of time, about five to six minutes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, so the time that he was on, I'm sorry about that. | |
| We talked about Senator Graham's objections. | ||
| We absolutely did. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Your headline at the bottom of the screen for that show was how the Senate had reached a deal when things are fluid between the Senate. | |
| The Senate and the White House had reached a deal, Wayne. | ||
| They had not voted yet. | ||
| That vote came in the evening. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I understood. | |
| And also on the Hill, there was an article about what you need to know about a partial government shutdown that would happen over the weekend. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| We already know that the House wasn't in session and wouldn't be until next week. | ||
| So even though they passed a deal, it still has to go to the House. | ||
| That's right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The House isn't even in session this week. | |
| That's right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And it would be a partial shutdown. | |
| That wasn't your headline yesterday. | ||
| So this is how I started the program, that we are in a partial shutdown. | ||
| We talked about that yesterday, that the House would still have to vote, and they're not in until Monday. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But your headline was that the Senate had reached a deal. | |
| Nothing about that there would be a high probability that there would be a partial shutdown because the House wasn't even in session and won't be until Monday. | ||
| Got it. | ||
| Do you have anything else? | ||
| Or was that your top news story? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Obviously, there's a partial shutdown. | |
| There is a partial shutdown. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| And you can watch what happens in the House on Monday on C-SPAN. | ||
| We'll have live gavel-to-gavel coverage, as we always do. | ||
| Here's Lee, Republican, Kalamazoo, Michigan. | ||
| Hi, Lee. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| I hope you're having a great day. | ||
| So far, so good, Lee. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, my whole thing is about the ICE situations. | |
| Granted, I am Republican, but I also look at laws and what laws are or what we have to abide by. | ||
|
Administrative Warrants Controversy
00:02:49
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|
unidentified
|
And when people interfere into an officer's job, they put themselves in danger. | |
| Would you allow your children to go out and get into the face of a police officer and spit at them? | ||
| I ask America this because one is you have to picture it as being right and wrong. | ||
| Yes, it's right to protest in right situations where you can be on the side of the road, you can protest. | ||
| But once you start getting into the realm of getting to the face of the officers, and with ICE, they're doing a job. | ||
| That's their job. | ||
| There are over, oh, God, what was it? | ||
| Some many thousand warrants that are signed by the judges that are to go out and pick up these people, these illegals. | ||
| Well, when they're going out and doing their job and you have a group of protesters, paid protesters, coming out and interfering in that job, throwing rocks at them, throwing ice, throwing, just being complete idiots. | ||
| Yeah, no, Throwing things, spitting at somebody, that is considered assault, Lee. | ||
| You're right about that. | ||
| But I just wanted to go back to something that you said about warrants and signed by judges. | ||
| So that is one of the issues that Democrats have brought up: that they want judicial warrants, which means it would, and not in all cases, but that that would be signed by a judge. | ||
| What they're going by now is what's called administrative warrants, which is just kind of ICE officials signing off and saying, go get this guy or go get that person, whatever. | ||
|
unidentified
|
With all the warrants that the judges have signed, also, if you can't do what's by the law, then what's to say that, you know, I want to go break the law. | |
| I want to go rob a bank. | ||
| Yeah, that is definitely illegal. | ||
| You're absolutely right, Lee. | ||
| But we're out of time, but coming up later in the program, we'll have Omar Noora Dean from the government watchdog group Common Cause to discuss the Trump administration's push for voter data in Minnesota and other states and that recent FBI raid in Fulton County, Georgia for 2020 ballots. | ||
| But coming up next, after the break, Gun Owners of America Senior Vice President Eric Pratt discusses President Trump and administration officials saying that Alex Predi, the 37-year-old recently killed by federal officers in Minneapolis, should not have been carrying a gun during the incident. | ||
|
Gun Free Zones Debate
00:14:34
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| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Past president, why are you doing this? | |
| This is outrageous. | ||
| This is a kangaroo court. | ||
| Fridays, C-SPAN presents a rare moment of unity. | ||
| Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins. | ||
| Politico Playbook chief correspondent and White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns is host of Ceasefire, bringing two leaders from opposite sides of the aisle into a dialogue. | ||
| Ceasefire on the network that doesn't take sides. | ||
| Fridays at 7 and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series, Sunday, with our guest Pulitzer Prize winner and best-selling author John Meacham, who has written numerous books chronicling American history. | ||
| His books include And There Was Light, Thomas Jefferson, and the prize-winning American Lion, Andrew Jackson, in the White House. | ||
| He joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein. | ||
| Watch America's Book Club with John Meacham, Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal, joined by Eric Pratt. | ||
| He is senior vice president at Gun Owners of America, joining us to talk about the response to the Minnesota shooting and the Second Amendment. | ||
| Eric, welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you so much for having me, Mimi. | |
| It's great to be here. | ||
| Just start us off with telling us about your organization, Gun Owners of America, your mission, and about how many members you have. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| Well, Gun Owners of America is a grassroots organization. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're made up of more than 2 million Americans who love freedom and who are dedicated to defending our Second Amendment rights, which matters because that freedom allows people to protect themselves not just from criminal violence, but from government tyranny as well. | |
| At our core, GOA is no compromise, and we're actively winning in the courts, in the Congress, and in the states. | ||
| But honestly, ultimately our strength is our members. | ||
| They peacefully exercise their First Amendment freedoms, which is their right to petition their government. | ||
| But that loud voice has made such a huge difference over the years, and there's no doubt about that. | ||
| And Eric, before we get into the topic at hand, the NRA is also a gun membership organization. | ||
| Can you give us an idea of how you differ from them, if at all? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Well, they're obviously the older organization on the block. | ||
| They've been here for more than 100 years and they do a lot of good work with the shooting sports and things like that, which honestly we don't get involved in. | ||
| We are purely an organization that focuses on regaining our Second Amendment rights. | ||
| And I know they do some of that too, obviously, but that is our sole mission. | ||
| And so that's why we are so heavily involved in the courts, in the Congress, and in the state legislatures. | ||
| Now, regarding the shooting of Alex Predi in Minneapolis a week ago, President Trump has asserted twice this week that, quote, he said you can't walk in with guns. | ||
| He's also said, quote, he shouldn't have been carrying a gun. | ||
| What was your reaction when you heard that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, we disagreed with those comments the way it was stated and some of the others, voices that have come from the administration. | |
| I will say that there were a couple of voices in the White House who made very strong statements supporting the ability to exercise our First and Second Amendment rights together. | ||
| And that was during this past week. | ||
| And, you know, we appreciate that because the U.S. has a long history of recognizing that freedom. | ||
| You know, you go way back, the Boston Tea Party was a peaceful protest that was carried out by armed individuals. | ||
| And you look at the civil rights marches during the 1960s. | ||
| The Deacons for Defense used firearms to protect peaceful marchers who were being attacked by racist thugs. | ||
| So through our history, we see that Second Amendment rights and peaceful protests are not mutually exclusive. | ||
| And that's why we'd like to see the administration uphold this right, even while acknowledging that you can't use your freedom to interfere with a legitimate law enforcement activity that's constitutionally protected, which, you know, I think is what many administration officials were trying to say. | ||
| And not to belabor this point, but one of those officials was Greg Bovino, who has been removed since then as Board of Patrol Commander at Large. | ||
| He said that the Second Amendment didn't apply to Alex Predi in this situation. | ||
| Are there certain situations like a protest where you would say that maybe it doesn't apply or do you reject that statement flat out? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, the Second Amendment says that the right shall not be infringed. | |
| So we believe there shouldn't be infringements on the right. | ||
| But again, as I mentioned earlier, that doesn't give one the freedom or the license to interfere with lawful law enforcement activities that are protected under the Constitution. | ||
| And so, you know, to that point, you know, obviously there isn't that license, but I think they need to be very careful how they say this and not make it sound like one has to choose between the first and second amendment. | ||
| They're not mutually exclusive. | ||
| We can walk and chew gum and exercise both freedoms at the same time. | ||
| I want to invite our viewers to start calling in now. | ||
| If you've got a question for our guest, Eric Pratt, Gun Owners of America, you can call 202748-8000 if you're a Democrat. | ||
| If you're a Republican, it's 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independence, 202748-8002. | ||
| We also have a line set aside for gun owners. | ||
| That line is 202-748-8003. | ||
| And that's the same number you can use for texting us. | ||
| Eric, Mr. Pretty had, I believe, an open carry permit. | ||
| Can you explain the permit that he had and what that allows? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, a permit means that you've gone through, obviously, the permit process, and that can vary from state to state. | |
| Some states are constitutional carry, which means that you don't even need to get permission as long as you're a law-abiding individual. | ||
| Well, Minnesota is not one of those, which means he had gone through the process where they had done background checks on him, and obviously there were no felonies or anything that would have flagged him as being prohibited from carrying a firearm. | ||
| And how different do the state laws vary in that case as far as where you can carry your gun, if it can be concealed, if it can be open? | ||
| What are the laws around that? | ||
| And what are the variances? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, if you go back a few years, there was tremendous variance. | |
| Most states had what we call shall issue permits. | ||
| In other words, if you're not a bad guy, the government shall issue you the permit. | ||
| There were a few states that were what was known as may issue, that even if you weren't a bad guy, you're a law-abiding citizen, they may issue you the permit or they may not issue you the permit. | ||
| And so there was a very significant Supreme Court case that was the Bruin decision, which said that those states that were exercising discretion and keeping good people from carrying, that was illegitimate. | ||
| So as a result of that, now every state is either what I mentioned earlier, constitutional carry where you don't even have to get a permit. | ||
| You can carry as a matter of right, protected by the Second Amendment, as long as you're not a bad guy. | ||
| And there's 29 of those states. | ||
| And who decides if you're a bad guy? | ||
| So there's no background check at all on that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's right. | |
| Well, look at it this way. | ||
| Can you decide yourself if you're a good guy or a bad guy? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think criminals know if they have a record. | |
| And by the way, they don't care about permitting process. | ||
| They carry anyway. | ||
| That's what bad guys do. | ||
| They don't care about the laws. | ||
| So this was saying, you know what, we're not going to punish good people because of what bad people are doing. | ||
| I mean, imagine being told you can't drive a car because there's some people who drive drunk. | ||
| Or, you know, we're going to make you a law-abiding citizen blow into, you know, a device that will then only allow your car to run. | ||
| And that's because there's those bad people out there that drive drunk. | ||
| Those 29 states are saying it is your right. | ||
| It is your God-given right to protect yourself. | ||
| And so we're not going to put hurdles. | ||
| And if you use your gun in a crime, then you're like any other criminal now, and they will treat you accordingly and hopefully take you off the street. | ||
| So, but back to the Bruin case, every state now is at a minimum a shall issue carry state. | ||
| But what started happening is you have a lot of states, or I should say some like New York and California that said, okay, you can get your permit, but we're only going to leave a couple of streets where you can actually exercise your right to carry. | ||
| And so they started passing gun-free zones. | ||
| They call them sensitive places, but really they're gun-free zones. | ||
| And so states like New York, California, Hawaii started passing gun-free zones all over their states. | ||
| And so now those laws are being challenged. | ||
| In fact, we won on that very point in New York in our Antony case. | ||
| In Hawaii, they challenged it and lost at the circuit court level. | ||
| So because of our win and Hawaii's loss, that created a court split or a circuit split. | ||
| And so now the Hawaii case is actually before the Supreme Court and they held oral arguments a couple weeks ago. | ||
| We've got a question for you by text from Jeff in Michigan who says that Predty had a concealed carry permit. | ||
| What he was doing is completely legal, yet Rittenhouse is a Republican hero, and this is in reference to Kyle Rittenhouse. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So let me say this: it would be foolish for me to comment on an incident that is now under investigation right now in Minnesota, especially where the key facts remain in dispute, and honestly, where we haven't even seen the body camp footage. | |
| Now, what I will say, GOA did immediately call for a full investigation because transparency is really essential to maintaining public trust. | ||
| Now, in regard to Rittenhouse, the difference there is we're talking about a case that already went through the full judicial system, and he was acquitted by a jury. | ||
| So, we're kind of comparing apples and oranges there in terms of the stage in the process. | ||
| Because, with the one, most recently, now we're looking forward to an investigation, whereas Rittenhouse, you know, he had a full court trial and was acquitted by the jury. | ||
| And, Eric, if you could just remind our viewers about the facts of that Rittenhouse case. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| So, this was several years ago. | ||
| It was actually during President Trump's first term. | ||
| I want to say it was 2018. | ||
| But actually, no, it may have been later than that. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| I think it was during the previous administration. | ||
| But anyway, there was a lot of public unrest, and he had a firearm on him, and he used that firearm when he was attacked by several individuals. | ||
| And so, I mean, that's at its core. | ||
| He was charged with murder and with assault, but he was acquitted on all accounts. | ||
| And that acquittal was November of 2021. | ||
| He was 17 years old at the time. | ||
| Let's talk to our viewers and start with William, a Democrat in Miamisburg, Ohio. | ||
| Good morning, William. | ||
| Good morning, Mimi and Mr. Pratt. | ||
| I'm just a dumb 90-year-old hillbilly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've never owned a gun in my life. | |
| And as far as amendments, there's nothing that pertains to Trump. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He is the ruler. | |
| I'm just waiting for some country to come in and kidnap him and Mr. Hagseth and charge them with murder for 123 people. | ||
| And I hope that happens before one of these countries eliminates the USA from extension. | ||
| And believe you me, with this idiot, it is coming. | ||
| So, William, regarding regarding the Second Amendment and gun rights, do you have something along those lines for our guests? | ||
| I don't own a gun, but I think if you can pass to get a permit, you should be allowed to carry it. | ||
|
Why Can't We License Guns?
00:16:01
|
||
| All right. | ||
| All right, let's talk to Stephen, a Republican, Alexandria, Virginia. | ||
| Go ahead, Stephen. | ||
| Hi. | ||
| I just want to make sure that you understand I am a Republican, a voting Republican. | ||
| I also have a concealed weapons permit. | ||
| And I believe Donald Trump is a traitor, and all who associate with him are traitors. | ||
| But anyway, I'll leave it at that. | ||
| But the hypothetical that I'd like to have us consider is if I am carrying a gun and observe misbehavior or let's say unlawful behavior on the part of law enforcement officers, such as they tackle an innocent person and shoot him. | ||
| Am I in my rights to use that gun to stop the actions of the law enforcement of the law enforcement agents in that situation? | ||
| All right, let's take that question. | ||
| Go ahead, Eric. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, I think you get on very dangerous grounds there when, because now you're, you know, it sounds like you're talking about a lone ranger deciding what is proper and improper. | |
| I mean, that's why we have the legal system. | ||
| That's why we have the justice system to decide those questions. | ||
| Dom is a gun owner in Iowa. | ||
| Hi, Dom. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
| Hi. | ||
| Yeah, I was going to comment, you know, a lot of times it boils down to common sense. | ||
| You know, you take and carry a gun to something like that, you're just asking for trouble. | ||
| You know, where is the common sense? | ||
| You know, you take it to a gun to a powder keg, something is going to happen. | ||
| It's not that, you know, you're there with the protesters, and the protesters are not going to attack you for protesting with them and that. | ||
| And law enforcement, if he wouldn't have had that gun on him, he'd probably be alive today. | ||
| You know, I'm not saying they didn't overreact, but I'm saying he didn't use any common sense. | ||
| All right, Dom, let's get Eric Pratt to comment on that. | ||
| Eric, he seems to agree with the administration officials who said he shouldn't have brought the gun in the first place and he was asking for trouble. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the reason somebody would bring a firearm is strictly for self-defense. | |
| I mean, let's look at the other situation we just talked about. | ||
| If Kyle Rittenhouse did not have a firearm with him, he would probably be dead right now. | ||
| And it was his firearm that he was able to use to protect himself in the midst of a riot, which, you know, by the way, if you remember the facts on that, I mean, he was simply there to help clean up the city. | ||
| He wasn't trying to be a part of the riot in any way, but as things spread, he got enveloped into it. | ||
| But, you know, he used his firearm for self-defense. | ||
| You know, I think that the difference with that is he had it purely for self-defense. | ||
| He wasn't looking to use it against the authorities in any way. | ||
| This is Christopher in Jupiter, Florida, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Mr. Pratt. | ||
| Lovely day to you, sir. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Same to you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I am a proud gun owner myself. | ||
| Admittedly, I'm not very good at operating them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't fire them very often. | |
| I don't have the time to go shoot them. | ||
| My question to you, and I wanted to propose this: is why can't we talk about and have a conversation for a legitimate licensing procedure to own a gun, just like you would a car, just to make sure that you're proficient at it and that you can show that you operate the gun proficiently and effectively. | ||
| And you can also provide de-escalation concepts into the licensing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And you just make somebody show that they can operate a gun like that. | |
| What do you say? | ||
| In most states, there's actually far fewer restrictions on car ownership and use than on firearms. | ||
| You know, I have a license in Virginia. | ||
| I can drive anywhere in the country. | ||
| I can't do that with my concealed carry permit. | ||
| I have a son who bought a car before he was even old enough to drive. | ||
| He can't do that with firearms. | ||
| And I could go on and on with, you know, some states have fingerprinting. | ||
| Almost every state has background checks. | ||
| Certainly to buy a firearm in this country. | ||
| You go into a gun store, you go through a background check. | ||
| I don't ever remember going through a background check to purchase a car. | ||
| You know, the differences are myriad, but it's almost to the point where I would say I would much rather just have the restrictions that we have on cars applied to firearms as opposed to the existing ones we have now. | ||
| And I say that by contrast because obviously we believe the Second Amendment says, again, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. | ||
| So to that point, I would take issue with all those restrictions that you just laid out. | ||
| Those shouldn't even exist. | ||
| Michael in Cleveland, Ohio, Independent Line. | ||
| Hi, Michael. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Hey, hi, you guys. | ||
| I'm going to tell everybody that we're all facing the fact here that that man came to that protest with two clips. | ||
| When you take two clips to anywhere, you're looking for trouble. | ||
| Why did he have two clips on him? | ||
| And another thing, these guys are talking about how this country is going to, another country is going to come in and kidnap Trump and Hess. | ||
| I don't know what that 90-year-old man's drinking down there, but I'm telling you, the man had two clips on him. | ||
| He was coming to look for trouble. | ||
| And here, look what he did a week before. | ||
| He showed anger. | ||
| If anything, as a psychologist as I am, he should have never had a gun. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And your response to that, Eric, about the two clips and that he was looking for trouble because of that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, again, I'm not going to address what was in his state of mind. | |
| I think that that'll all be part of the investigation. | ||
| As far as the magazines that he had, you know, it is interesting. | ||
| If he had magazines that were over 10 rounds, in many states, anti-gun Democrats are trying to ban that. | ||
| That's going on right now in Virginia. | ||
| As a Virginia resident, I'm looking at our legislature, which is now controlled by Democrats, and the governor, who is now a Democrat, and they are looking to ban those from law-abiding Americans. | ||
| So, you know, there's a bit of a hypocrisy right now that we're seeing Democrats all of a sudden sounding like champions for Pareti saying, you know, he had his right to carry a firearm in the magazines, whereas in other states, their fellow Democrats are trying to ban them from us. | ||
| And, Eric, does your organization, just to be clear, believe that there should be any limits in the amount of ammunition that a person is allowed to carry? | ||
| Again, the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, no, there shouldn't be restrictions. | |
| And if somebody is a dangerous person, then honestly, they shouldn't be out on the street because once they are out on the street, you will never prevent them from getting their hands on some type of weapon. | ||
| So, it becomes a justice, you know, an issue of our court system if we keep putting people, bad people, back out onto the streets. | ||
| But law-abiding people shouldn't be restricted any more than, you know, just like it's been said under the First Amendment, you can't yell fire in a crowded theater when there is no fire. | ||
| And yet, we don't gag people when they go into the theater, right? | ||
| We don't do that to prevent them from yelling fire. | ||
| No, what do we do? | ||
| If they yell fire when there's no fire, they get punished for that. | ||
| Well, that's the way it should be under the Second Amendment as well. | ||
| Daryl, a gun owner in New Jersey, you're on the air. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Mr. Pratt. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning, sir. | ||
| Please define for me shall not be infringed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I have three questions. | |
| Shall not be infringed. | ||
| What does that mean? | ||
| Please define for me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You have to answer that when I ask the next one. | |
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so infringement is limitations, restrictions. | |
| You probably have better access to a dictionary right now than I do. | ||
| But no limitations whatsoever for law-abiding citizens. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| That means all gun permits and gun laws are inherently unconstitutional. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| My second question is, who gets to define what is a protest and when a protest starts? | ||
| The government, the people? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's a slippery slope. | |
| And what's your third one, Darrell? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My third one is the founding fathers bought guns to their protests. | |
| That's how it's all started. | ||
| The First Amendment is amended for the people, and the Constitution tells the government what they shall not do. | ||
| It doesn't give us rights. | ||
| Our rights are inherited from God passed down. | ||
| And Darrell, can you tell us a little bit about the guns that you own? | ||
| How many do you want to share that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You can tell that you're not a gun owner. | |
| We don't talk about things like that just for situations like that. | ||
| That we're in where they can knock on your door. | ||
| Is that any coming to you? | ||
| Is that right, Eric Pratt? | ||
| Is that like an inappropriate question to a gun owner? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Spot on. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I take it back. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| Let's talk to David, Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, Republican. | ||
| Go ahead, David. | ||
| Hello, how are you today? | ||
| I just want to make a point. | ||
| The Bill of Rights, you know, the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, they primarily protected the individual and the states from the federal government. | ||
| That was the original intention, including the Second Amendment, so to speak. | ||
| So, in other words, up until the doctrine of a corporation of the Supreme Court was delegated those some of the aspects of the Ten Amendments to the states, the states could have regulated gun ownership any way they wanted to. | ||
| In other words, some states could have prohibited any kind of ownership or whatever, but the Supreme Court delegated that to the states under the doctrine of a corporation. | ||
| I don't know if you know what I'm talking about. | ||
| I listened to Mark Levin. | ||
| One other comment is in Pennsylvania, they changed the threshold for ownership, or they changed the threshold for getting a gun permit, just having an arrest on your record, even though you never went to trial and never convicted, just having an arrest for a crime that's punishable by two years or more, you can be denied a concealed carrier permit. | ||
| That's basically all I really wanted to say. | ||
| All right, Eric Pratt, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, my understanding is that, you know, the caller is right that before the 14th Amendment, states had more freedom in terms of laws that they could pass. | |
| However, many states did have their own Bill of Rights, which protected things like the right to keep beararms. | ||
| Now, with the 14th Amendment came the incorporation doctrine, and then that was specifically applied to the Second Amendment. | ||
| That is, just to make this simple, under the McDonald decision by the Supreme Court, the states and localities can no longer infringe upon our Second Amendment rights. | ||
| And so, yeah, that's why we now see the current civil rights division of the Justice Department challenging state laws that are infringing people's Second Amendment rights. | ||
| And they're doing this in California with concealed carry. | ||
| They're doing this in Illinois with certain types of firearms, frequently called assault weapons, but basically they're commonly owned firearms. | ||
| So, anyway, the Trump Justice Department is using that doctrine to go after states that are restricting people's rights. | ||
| Jeff, a Democrat, Indianapolis, Indiana, go ahead. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| Mr. Pratt, I take it you are someone who you're kind of right-leaning, I guess. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I believe in the Second Amendment, so if that's what it does, then so be it. | |
| Well, you know, I'm a liberal and I believe in the Second Amendment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You got a problem with that? | |
| No. | ||
| In fact, a lot of our members are self-described, quote-unquote, liberals who believe in the Second Amendment like you do, and they're members of Gun Owners of America. | ||
| Because I am a gun owner, and I believe in the Second Amendment, and it just seemed like it gets kind of blurred with Republicans. | ||
| I remember back in the 1960s, I know you being a historian, I guess, that at one time Ronald Reagan had an issue with the Black Panthers practicing their Second Amendment, and even the NRA agreed with him. | ||
| Do you think that was pretty consistent there? | ||
| Because it seemed like you guys worship Cal Rittenhouse as a hero, and that's debatable, and Mr. Print as someone being irresponsible. | ||
| And it just seemed like, well, I'll just say, and I'll close with this. | ||
| Conservatives don't have a monopoly on the Second Amendment. | ||
| So let's be clear that we just believe in responsible gun ownership. | ||
| I don't believe Charles Manson should walk around with a gun. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Would you agree with that? | |
| You can go on our website at gunowners.org, and you will find press releases and articles where we supported the right for the Black Panthers to be able to march, you know, peacefully march, but to do so while armed. | ||
|
Conservatives And The Second Amendment
00:12:58
|
||
|
unidentified
|
And I agree with you. | |
| I mean, the Second Amendment is not about political party. | ||
| It is a human, God-given right that he gives to everybody. | ||
| And that's what we advocate for. | ||
| James, Independent, Hamburg, New York, you're on the air with Eric Pratt. | ||
| Good morning, sir. | ||
| Morning. | ||
| I live in Western New York. | ||
| And when you want to say, just own a pistol, say, have it in your house for protection, you still have to go through the fingerprinting, the background checks. | ||
| You even have to submit so that the local police could go onto your social media to find out, you know, if you're a good person. | ||
| I don't understand why we have a second amendment right, but nobody's going after judges that infringe on it. | ||
| I even know the Democrats said something about illegal orders. | ||
| You're not supposed to follow them. | ||
| Well, when judges violate the Second Amendment, isn't there a legal recourse for that? | ||
| And I understand Trump is supposed to be the best, but I've only seen more rules in New York for guns. | ||
| So is anyone ever going to correct this injustice? | ||
| I mean, we don't have slavery. | ||
| We don't allow states to have partial slavery, and we'll figure it out in court later. | ||
| These are the rules. | ||
| Everyone's supposed to follow them. | ||
| I mean, I'm lost here. | ||
| Eric Pratt. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I think the answer is you have to vote in better representatives. | |
| You know, I frequently hear this in terms of congressmen. | ||
| Why can't we prosecute congressmen for their anti-gun votes? | ||
| And, you know, look, there's a speech and debate clause in the Constitution which protects people how they, or officials for how they vote. | ||
| And that's actually a good thing because otherwise you would have these wild swings where the party in power could always prosecute the people who are out of power for their contrary views. | ||
| You know, the real answer is the people need to elect better representatives. | ||
| And then that will have a domino effect because then those better representatives will end up or governors will appoint better judges. | ||
| And Dave is in Rock Creek, Ohio, a gun owner. | ||
| Hi, Dave. | ||
| Hi. | ||
| Hey, so I'm a Republican and a gun owner. | ||
| But I think the main distinction in this case is he was not peacefully protesting. | ||
| He was out engaging with law enforcement. | ||
| And it looks like in the earlier video where they show him kicking the taillight out of the truck, it looked like he had a firearm on there, too. | ||
| So, you know, you can peacefully protest and carry a weapon, but you can't engage with police officers and wrestle with them and stuff like that. | ||
| Just because you have a gun with you makes it worse. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And Jeffrey in Columbus, Mississippi, Democrat, you're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir. | |
| So you're saying that Alex Purdy, because in Minnesota, it gives you the right to have a concealed weapon, even though you're out of state. | ||
| Why what gives in the ICE agent or federal agents the right to take their weapon away from them and then after they take the weapon away from them, after he's down, literally down on his stomach, shoot him? | ||
| You said he's there for harm, but the weapon was concealed. | ||
| Any comment there, Mr. Pratt? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, that's, you know, we're getting into the facts, and we're looking for a good, thorough, impartial investigation into that. | |
| I'll just say, in terms of the earlier comments that the caller made, you know, when we say that we're allowed or we're given the right, I wouldn't say that that comes from the state. | ||
| Again, that is a human, God-given right. | ||
| We have that right to be able to defend ourselves. | ||
| And part of the problem is that governments have usurped that right and they're treating it as a privilege where they give it to some and not others or they put hurdles that make it difficult for people to carry. | ||
| So anyway, I think it's just important to remember that those rights that we see in the Bill of Rights, they're trying to codify God-given rights. | ||
| Margaret, Republican, St. Augustine, Florida, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I woke up in the middle of this, so I don't know if you covered it. | ||
| I've heard the arguments about the right to bear arms. | ||
| And of course, when that was passed, the arms they were talking about were different than the arms we have today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And that sort of blow up people. | |
| And that's what most people are upset about when the school shootings happen and how the children blow up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I'm curious. | |
| And also the idea of the argument that it was about the militias owning the guns. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What about if we kept the amendment, like you say, and let anybody have whatever they want, but they couldn't be the arms that were available in the year that amendment was passed? | |
| The kind of guns where you have to reload almost every time you shoot them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, if we were going to do that, then I suppose we should just go back to quill pens and parchment because that was the technology that they had during that day. | |
| But a pen and a parchment can't kill you. | ||
| A gun can. | ||
| So the idea that the founding fathers didn't even consider the power of assault rifles and that they weren't really thinking that common citizens would have access to that and everybody would have access to that. | ||
| What do you say to that specifically? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Two things. | |
| First of all, they did have repeating firearms at that time already, number one. | ||
| Number two, even the muskets, you know, if that's what you're saying you want to limit us to, guess what? | ||
| Those were weapons of war. | ||
| That was the modern technology. | ||
| And so really, just as the First Amendment protects the freedom of speech in however the technology evolves, that should also apply to the Second Amendment. | ||
| So that, I mean, if the Second Amendment is going to be a defense against tyranny, it's not really a good defense if the people have muskets and the government has fully automatic weapons. | ||
| Let's talk to Michael, Stanford, Connecticut, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Hey, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning, Mr. Pratt. | |
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've never heard a gun guy talking out of both sides of his mouth like you. | |
| I mean, first you say that the risk in the house guy in Wisconsin would probably be dead if he didn't have his gun. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, he probably wouldn't have gone there if he didn't have a gun. | |
| He was out there causing more than just mischief, and he didn't shot somebody. | ||
| Now, you're a gun owner. | ||
| You said that. | ||
| Now, what if you were face down on the ground with all these guys on your back and then they shot you in the back? | ||
| You know, isn't it to protect yourself from tyranny? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Now, what's going on in Minnesota doesn't look like tyranny to you? | |
| I mean, come on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
These people are out there. | |
| They're protesting. | ||
| And you tell me, oh, you should leave your gun at home. | ||
| I bet you you have a gun on you right now. | ||
| You don't leave the house without it, and it's always there. | ||
| You got your car keys, you got your gun, you got whatever else you want to leave the house with. | ||
| Michael, in his defense, he did not say that you should leave your gun at home when you go to a protest. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He must have come. | |
| Michael must have come in later. | ||
| I've been watching this whole thing. | ||
| Well, then you've mischaracterized what I've said. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Go ahead, Eric. | ||
|
unidentified
|
First of all, yeah, I am armed right now. | |
| You're absolutely right about that. | ||
| And I have never, ever said that anyone, any law-abiding person should not have the right to have a firearm on them. | ||
| In fact, absolutely, they should when they are engaging in free speech, free and peaceful speech. | ||
| Now, the difference, and here's the big difference. | ||
| I've said, you know, the Rittenhouse case, that went through the jury system. | ||
| So the way you've characterized it is a bit different than the way the jury understood it. | ||
| So I'll just leave it there. | ||
| As far as what's happened in Minnesota, we are calling for a full and vigorous and impartial investigation. | ||
| And honestly, if there's any hypocrisy to this, and I alluded to this before, you know, it's the way that the anti-gun left, as I assume that the caller is here, typically favors banning firearms or restricting firearms. | ||
| This is what we're dealing with again here in Virginia. | ||
| You know, speaking of Virginia, when Virginia went blue several years ago, they banned the carrying of firearms at permitted rallies. | ||
| Gun owners of America actually had to go to court to get that lifted. | ||
| So it's actually ironic that now the left is championing people's right to carry there in Minnesota, where in states like Virginia and California and many other states, they're actually trying to ban that ability to actually go armed to a rally. | ||
| One more call for you, Eric. | ||
| This is Ruben in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Democrat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I agree with the guy. | |
| You are talking out both sides of your mouth. | ||
| You keep saying the anti-gun left when it's the president that's also calling for you shouldn't have a gun if you're a peaceful protester. | ||
| This guy was laying down on his stomach and he was shot in his back and he was carrying his gun. | ||
| He was not brandishing his gun. | ||
| Christy Noam lied and the president lied and they keep saying he was waving his gun around. | ||
| Even Congressman Trey Gowdy said you can't distinguish the vote between he and Kyle Rittenhouse. | ||
| Kyle Rittenhouse was a child. | ||
| He shouldn't have had a gun inside Wisconsin and crossed, plus he crossed state lines with a gun. | ||
| I know here in Philadelphia between Jersey, you cannot cross a state line with a gun. | ||
| Now you keep saying the anti-gun leftist. | ||
| What about the president calling now for not to carry a gun? | ||
| There was a couple that they celebrated on stage that came out on a Black Lives Matter and pulled their guns out on them. | ||
| Stop saying anti-gun left. | ||
| You are showing discrepancy between them and the right. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And last comment, Eric, and also the point about Kyle Rittenhouse being 17 and owning an AR-15 style rifle. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So perhaps the caller hasn't been listening the entire time, but I vigorously disagreed with what Republicans were saying, even in the administration, when they said people can't walk around with guns. | |
| We disagree with that. | ||
| Absolutely, totally full stop. | ||
| At the same time, the anti-gun left is trying to disarm gun owners. | ||
| Just look at what's happening right now in Virginia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is very close to me because I live in the state of Virginia and they've introduced like 20 to 30, maybe 40 bills to restrict my rights. | |
| You don't see that happening in red states. | ||
| So there is a difference in the degree and the vigorousness that the left goes after disarming people. | ||
| And again, I'll just close with this. | ||
| Go on our website at gunowners.org. | ||
| We supported the Black Panthers in their right to peacefully protest while armed. | ||
| You know, the Second Amendment should have no party. | ||
| It's for everyone. | ||
| And Eric, just to put a point on it, as far as the age of people, do you think that there should be an age limit on who has the right to own an assault rifle? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that varies by state. | |
| In New Hampshire, there's actually no minimum age to get a concealed carry permit. | ||
| So, you know, that should be a state issue, and I think it has been. | ||
| All right, that's Eric Pratt, Senior Vice President of Gun Owners of America, their website, gunowners.org. | ||
|
Baldwin On C-SPAN
00:04:18
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||
| Thanks so much for joining us today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're welcome. | |
| Thanks, Mimi. | ||
| Coming up later on the Washington Journal, Omar Nooradine from the government watched dog group Common Cause discusses the Trump administration's push for voter data. | ||
| And coming up after the break, though, it's open forum, so you can start calling. | ||
| And now, here are the lines. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
| The latest book is titled The Fate of the Generals. | ||
| MacArthur, Wainwright, and the Epic Battle for the Philippines. | ||
| The publisher, Scribner, explains the premise of Horn's book. | ||
| For the doomed stand American forces made in the Philippines at the start of World War II, two generals received the country's highest military award, the Medal of Honor. | ||
| One was the charismatic Douglas MacArthur, whose orders forced him to leave his troops and go to Australia. | ||
| The other was the gritty Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright, who became a hero to the troops, whose fate he insisted on sharing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
A new interview with author Jonathan Horne about his book, The Fate of the Generals, MacArthur, Wainwright, and the Epic Battle for the Philippines. | |
| Book Notes Plus with our host Brian Lamb is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| Sunday on C-SPAN's Q&A. | ||
| In his book, Baldwin, A Love Story, Nicholas Boggs discusses the personal life and activism of American writer James Baldwin. | ||
| Mr. Boggs, who spent more than 20 years working on his book, also talks about Mr. Baldwin's many writings, his life outside the United States, and his involvement in the 1963 March on Washington. | ||
| And Baldwin had, in fact, written a speech to be read there, and he had written it in France. | ||
| He'd gone over to France for a march over there. | ||
| These were black Americans in France who were doing a march along the scent in support of the March on Washington. | ||
| And then Baldwin brought this speech with him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And the exact reasons and specifics of how this happened, we don't know. | |
| But somehow or other, he didn't end up reading it. | ||
| But a very famous person, actor at the time, without saying that it was James Baldwin's words, read these words about black global liberation coming out of the mouth of, you guessed it or not, Burt Lancaster. | ||
| Nicholas Box with his book, Baldwin, A Love Story, Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's QA. | ||
| You can listen to Q&A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts. | ||
| I have been watching C-SPAN Washington Journal for over 10 years now. | ||
| This is a great format that C-SPAN offers. | ||
| You're doing a great job. | ||
| I enjoy hearing everybody's opinion. | ||
| I'm a huge C-SPAN fan. | ||
| I listen every morning on the way to work. | ||
| I think C-SPAN should be a required feeling for all three branches of government. | ||
| First of all, if you say hello, C-SPAN, and how you all covered the hearings. | ||
| Thank you, everyone at C-SPAN, for allowing this interaction with everyday citizens. | ||
| It's an amazing show to get real opinions from real people. | ||
| Appreciate you guys' non-biased coverage. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I love politics, and I love C-SPAN because I get to hear all the voices. | |
| You and C-SPAN show the truth. | ||
| Back to the universe for C-SPAN. | ||
| It's the one essential news network. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Washington Journal continues. | |
| It's open forum, and we are taking your calls on any topic that you'd like to discuss, as long as it's related to politics and public policy. | ||
|
Gun Owner's Perspective
00:03:03
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| We'll start on the Republican line in Ohio. | ||
| Jeff, good morning. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| That was a very interesting segment with Mr. Pratt just now. | ||
| And I have to admit, I'm not a gun owner. | ||
| And I do have a question for anyone out there who knows about permit to carry licenses. | ||
| But if you have a gun on your possession and you have a permit to carry, does that gun have to be in a locked position, you know, so it's safe to carry, or can you carry it without the lock being on? | ||
| And I was wondering about that because it appeared the gun went off accidentally, according to a video I saw after it was removed from the person who was shot in Minnesota. | ||
| You saw Mr. Predi's gun go off? | ||
| Where did you see that? | ||
| Because I hadn't heard that. | ||
| It was on a video. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It looked like the agent had removed it. | |
| And when he put it towards the ground, it went off automatically, according to the report. | ||
| And that's when it's reported that an agent opened fire, thinking possibly that the person had shot it. | ||
| But I'm just curious about the locking mechanism on a permit. | ||
| Does that have to be on? | ||
| And if it wasn't on, does that make you believe there's some intent there to harm someone when you're carrying? | ||
| That's all. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And let's, I'd like to take a look and see if that is the case. | ||
| It does, I mean, we do know that two, DHS says that two agents fired weapons. | ||
| It says a video appears to show a federal officer took gun away from Paradise just before fatal shooting. | ||
| So I'm not sure that that's accurate, Jeff, about his gun going off. | ||
| Lonnie, Salisbury, North Carolina, Democrat, you're on the air. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| That's not true. | ||
| When you got a Glock, I'm a gun owner. | ||
| And I got several guns, and I'm African-American. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I love that about that freedom of handguns. | |
| But no, when you have a Glock, you have to cock it first, and then ammo will go into the chamber, and then you're ready to fire. | ||
| No semi-automatic will automatically discharge. | ||
| That's a lie. | ||
| They tell people this who's not a gun owner or never fired a gun. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But that's not what I want to talk about. | |
| But that gentleman just said that was a lie. | ||
| And they're going to try to spew this lie out to try to make it justifiable for shooting this man 10 times. | ||
|
New Documents Reveal Epstein's Orbit
00:03:40
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||
| And white people going along with it, too. | ||
| But what I call about is Mike Parker and Charles Bacon. | ||
|
unidentified
|
One was 10 at 92, and the other one was 11 and at 94. | |
| If you look at those two names, you'll find out that Donald Trump paid $3 million to the family for some reason of Marlustation. | ||
| These were boys. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It wasn't just girls that Epstein was pimping. | |
| So sorry, where'd you get this information about the payoff? | ||
| Oh, you could find that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You could Google that. | |
| You could even ask AI. | ||
| You asked AI about Michael Parker and Charles Bacon. | ||
| I know, but where are you getting news reports about it? | ||
| I understand about how Google works. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Well, I just Googled it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You just could Google their name and put in Mara-Lago, and they named it going to come up as this was some civil case that didn't go to court. | |
| It was a civil case, both of them. | ||
| It was around the same time Michael Jackson was going through his. | ||
| Michael Jackson had to pay out $26 million for the claim of the little white boy saying that Michael molested him. | ||
| So if you can send us the actual news reports about that from a credible source, then I will certainly show that. | ||
| Speaking of Epstein, though, there was another release of the Epstein files yesterday, and here is Todd Blanche. | ||
| He's Deputy Attorney General answering a question about that yesterday. | ||
| Can you assure the American public that President Trump, like every other prominent person whose name came up in relation to the Epstein files, that all documents, photos, and anything relevant to him connected to the case are being released? | ||
| I mean, yes, I can assure that we complied with the statute. | ||
| We complied with the act. | ||
| And there is no, we did not protect President Trump. | ||
| We didn't protect or not protect anybody. | ||
| I mean, I think that there's a hunger or a thirst for information that I do not think will be satisfied by the review of these documents. | ||
| And there's nothing I can do about that. | ||
| But President Trump, of all the people in Washington, D.C. and around this country that have said for years the same consistent message about Jeffrey Epstein, it's President Trump. | ||
| And so there's not been a change of course or anything. | ||
| And certainly his direction to the American people and the Department of Justice, sorry, his direction to the Department of Justice was to be as transparent, release the files, be as transparent as we can. | ||
| And that's exactly what we did. | ||
| And this is Politico with this article. | ||
| New documents reveal the breadth of Jeffrey Epstein's orbit. | ||
| Friday's document release shows the late convicted sex offender's vast influence network. | ||
| Here's what it says: that the Justice Department release of its investigative materials related to Epstein is packed with details about his ties to the most powerful figures in politics, tech, and global affairs. | ||
| Documents shed new light on the depth of his relationships between the convicted sex offender and figures such as Steve Bannon, Elon Musk, and world leaders. | ||
| In particular, the files contain extensive exchanges with Bannon as he mounted a political influence campaign across Europe and numerous overtures, the unrequited kind, to Musk. | ||
|
Addressing Gun Rights Misunderstandings
00:06:20
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| Gary in Connorsville, Indiana, Independent Line, you're on Open Forum. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, ma'am. | |
| Got a few quick points here, but first, I'd like to pay a special tribute of respect to you. | ||
| Ever since you become one of the moderators, you've been nothing short of outstanding. | ||
| You're an absolute credit to this program and to the staff. | ||
| And I'd like to take my hat off to you and a big thumbs up. | ||
| Thank you, Gary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But what I wanted to say here, I'm concerned about the balance between wages and prices. | |
| I mean, I think there's a lot of people that do complain that the prices are too high, like in the grocery store and everything. | ||
| And I think some of them people are probably victimized by the wages not being increased. | ||
| And because in a perfect world or in a reasonably good economy, you're going to have a good balance between wages and prices. | ||
| And so, you know, I mean, that's the only reasonable thing to think, right? | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, go ahead. | |
| I'd also like to say I totally agree with some of the stuff that was being said on the previous segment. | ||
| You know, this is one example why I became Democrat to independent because, I mean, I am a total advocate of, you know, defending yourself with firearms and only defending yourself. | ||
| Last thing I want to say is, yeah, I am from Indiana. | ||
| I'm a proud Hoosier and we are the champions, people. | ||
| Go coach Netty. | ||
| Walter Rehoboth, Massachusetts, Republican. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
| Yes, ma'am. | ||
| I know this is an opinionated program that you have here, and this is a good program. | ||
| I enjoy it very much. | ||
| But I think that Alex Pretty did not break the law. | ||
| And if people want to give their opinions and be a judge, then they should be a judge. | ||
| I think I was wrong that President Trump submitted his opinion because that man, Alex Pretty, did not break the law. | ||
| And there's a way and a procedure for people in the United States to change the law. | ||
| And that's what I've got to say. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Let's talk to William next. | ||
| Democrat, Atlanta, you're on the air, William. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, hi. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| I love your show. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| I would like to address the fundamental misunderstanding of the Second Amendment. | ||
| The Second Amendment was put in the Constitution because we disbanded the Continental Army on November 3rd, 1783. | ||
| Most of the significant battles won in the southern colonies were done with guerrilla warfare. | ||
| They did not want to divest the population of the ability to raise an army quickly again. | ||
| Again, the Continental Army was disbanded on November 3rd, 1783. | ||
| Now, a lot of your gun rights people are going to suggest that the weapon ownership is to prevent tyrannical governments from taking power again. | ||
| That was not the reason to extend the Second Amendment. | ||
| The extension of the Second Amendment was solely done so that the nation could continue to be armed without a standing army in case the state militias were called upon again to defend the country. | ||
| Now, this fundamental misunderstanding is intentional on the part of the NRA. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Have a great day, and I love your show. | ||
| Don, New Orleans, Louisiana, Independent Line. | ||
| Hi, Don. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Very good morning. | |
| On the eve of Black History Month and the 50th commemoration of Roots, the saga of an American family. | ||
| And it reminds me of this movie I enjoyed with Denzel Washington playing a young attorney, and he was defending a season attorney, Tom Hanks, in the movie Philadelphia. | ||
| When Tom Hanks was on the witness stand, he said, I love the law. | ||
| And so we have to look at the law, the Constitution, the national, the NBA, it celebrated 100 years last year. | ||
| Not the National Basketball Association, which will be commemorating the first blacks to play in the NBA in 19 starting in 1950, but the National Bar Association. | ||
| And so in this country, we must love the law, civil rights, equal rights, all the contemporary issues that surround the law. | ||
| Not get into these confrontations where someone is shot 10 times and justifications of that, those actions. | ||
| The law, the legal apparatus that we hold our civil societies to the higher standard. | ||
| And I say that to say that we have an issue of literacy, illiteracy, and learning disabilities in this country. | ||
| Half of our country reads on a grade level, sixth grade grade level. | ||
| And most newspapers, by chance, are written on an A grade reading level. | ||
| So, and the United States is in the middle of the pack when we talk about literacy. | ||
| Literacy, and most incarcerated people are functionally illiterate. | ||
| And so, and that costs the country over $2 trillion in economic prowess. | ||
| So, we have a serious issue in this country when we talk about just the civil rights, the understanding of the Constitution, the ability to read and comprehend. | ||
| We have a serious issue, so we should be focusing more on the issue of literacy and learning disabilities and the law and getting more people-women, men, women, men in New Orleans. | ||
| We have the Lewis Martinette Society, a legal society that promotes civil rights since the 1890s. | ||
|
Civil Rights and Literacy
00:15:16
|
||
| All right, Don. | ||
| Appreciate that. | ||
| I want to do a quick fact check that we were able to find that PolitiFact did a fact check on this allegation that there's a list that shows settlements Donald Trump made to 10 to 13 year old victims of child sex crimes. | ||
| This is in PolitiFact, and they said that this is false. | ||
| It says that there is no proof that Donald Trump made any settlements to 10 to 13-year-old-year-olds for child sex crimes. | ||
| They were not able to find any evidence of these cases or settlements. | ||
| Here is Norman, Torrington, Connecticut, Republican line. | ||
| Good morning, Norman. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Hey, I would just Don Lemon saying that he's a journalist, so he didn't commit a crime by breaking into that church and disrupting their service. | ||
| So I'm just wondering if William Kelly, I'm wondering if William Kelly, who broke in with him and was doing the same thing, videotaped everything he did, posted it on social media, asked questions. | ||
| He also disrupted the place too, but did the exact same thing. | ||
| Can he claim that he's a journalist? | ||
| And Norman, just to get everybody up to speed on that, this is the New York Times. | ||
| It says, Don Lemon released without bond over a Minnesota protest charge. | ||
| It says nine people have been accused of violating federal law during the demonstration at a church this month, reviving a case that was rejected last week by a magistrate judge. | ||
| This is at the New York Times if you'd like to read that. | ||
| And Chuck Schumer was on the floor of the Senate yesterday. | ||
| He was speaking about the arrest of Don Lemon. | ||
| You'll remember Don Lemon was an anchor at CNN formally. | ||
| Here he is. | ||
| Last night, federal agents arrested journalist Don Lemon in Los Angeles after he recently covered protest activities in Minnesota. | ||
| Once again, the administration is behaving no differently, differently from police states and authoritarian regimes across history. | ||
| They've arrested a journalist for the crime of doing his job. | ||
| And let's be very clear. | ||
| This arrest is not just about one journalist in one incident. | ||
| The arrest is a dark message to journalists everywhere. | ||
| If you dare criticize this administration, watch your back. | ||
| That's not a democracy. | ||
| That's a police state. | ||
| And that is pure authoritarian bile. | ||
| Democracy will suffer if the government chokes our civil liberties. | ||
| Under this administration, the Department of Justice has all too often become the Department of Vengeance. | ||
| Don Lemon should be released at once and the frivolous charges against him dropped. | ||
| Go to Ben, Fort Covington, New York. | ||
| Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Ben. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you very much for C-SPAN. | ||
| I'm calling mostly just to discuss the previous gentleman you had who was representing gun ownership. | ||
| I'm a moderate Democrat, and yes, we do exist, and I own a gun, and I'm not for limiting that right at all. | ||
| They love to quote the Second Amendment, but they leave out that first phrase about to guarantee a militia. | ||
| It doesn't have anything about Joe Smith running around with a gun. | ||
| But the other thing is they're always saying, well, it's absolutely fine for people to run around with open carry or hidden carry in Oklahoma or Texas. | ||
| But this guy in Minnesota, where it is legal, they've all come down on him from Trump right down to the guy who just had on. | ||
| They can't have it both ways, though. | ||
| That's the way they try. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| All right, let's talk to Patrick next, a Republican in Alabama. | ||
| Go ahead, Patrick. | ||
| Good morning, huh? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just, I wasn't going to call in today, but I heard that guy calling that poor man a liar about his gun going off. | |
| If he's a Democrat caller, if he had watched more and say in, he'd find out something. | ||
| There's a firearm attorney that's doing a video. | ||
| He's been on two or three different hosts. | ||
| I watched the video myself. | ||
| He's a specialist on guns. | ||
| On that model, it's a SIG-made gun, and that model, and this guy even had a special trigger mechanism. | ||
| It's $500 extra on his. | ||
| But yes, the gun did go off. | ||
| When the guy scraped, squeezed the barrel of it, the gun fired into the pavement. | ||
| So hold on. | ||
| Say that again, Patrick. | ||
| So the officer squeezed the gun, the barrel, and it went off by itself? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That firearm attorney said there's over 100 lawsuits against the SIG company over this model gun that has this special trigger mechanism. | |
| And they showed a video of it. | ||
| And that's a fault in the gun, or that's a special feature that it goes off by itself. | ||
| You put it on there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Technically, what it can do, it can make it from semi-automatic to fully automatic. | |
| They're not supposed to be. | ||
| So even fully automatic, Patrick, you have to pull the trigger. | ||
| So are you saying somebody pulled the trigger on Mr. Party's gun? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm trying to tell you that on this model gun, the SIG model, I mean, the MAKE, the MAKE is SIG, on this special model, there's over 100 lawsuits over this gun just going off. | |
| Just going off by itself. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| That is extremely dangerous, Patrick. | ||
| And I certainly hope they get those guns off the street. | ||
| Larry, St. Louis, Missouri, Independent Line, you're on the air. | ||
| Morning, and thanks for having us here today. | ||
| You know, one of the topics is the gun thing. | ||
| And, you know, my thoughts is here: a gun, the only thing a gun is designed to do is to kill. | ||
| That's what it's made for. | ||
| And I hear people saying they got to carry a gun to defend themselves. | ||
| Well, what are you defending yourself against? | ||
|
unidentified
|
A gun? | |
| You know, it just doesn't make any sense. | ||
| It's, you know, my thoughts is the Second Amendment, you know, it's about a musket gun that doesn't have nothing to do with today. | ||
| It's time to amend the amendment. | ||
| My thoughts also is, you know, the problem is with the guns. | ||
| If they stopped selling guns today, it would take over 200 years in order to clear this problem up. | ||
| None of us will be alive then. | ||
| So maybe it's a time that maybe the amendment being amended or possibly a new amendment make it illegal to buy the ammunition, make it where the government is in control of the ammunition, and you have to go underneath a psychiatric check to make sure that you're mentally able to do this. | ||
| And when I see that is, what I mean is, I was in a car accident about a year ago. | ||
| A guy runs a stop sign. | ||
| I don't have a gun. | ||
| I'm anti-gun. | ||
| Guns is what's killing our kids in school. | ||
| You know, you know, if you say, well, you got to carry a gun to defend yourself. | ||
| Well, does that mean that the kids in the school need to carry a gun? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, that's a whole thing. | |
| The whole thing is so out of pen. | ||
| You know, time to amend the amendment, this ruck thing. | ||
| If I had had a gun, this guy stopped, run a stop sign and run into the side of me. | ||
| Hurt my wife, hurt me. | ||
| And if I had had a gun, I would have been tempted to maybe shoot this guy. | ||
| So that's what I'm saying. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If you did a police check on me, I'm squeaky clean. | |
| I have nothing against me. | ||
| I'd never done anything. | ||
| You know, things just out of control. | ||
| Sorry, I got that point, Larry. | ||
| And thank you. | ||
| Margarita is in New York, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Margarita. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| So happy to see you. | ||
| I work all week, so this is a good time for me. | ||
| I just have three little things that I just wanted to say. | ||
| First of all, the protests yesterday, thousands and thousands and thousands of people in New York, all over, Democrats, Republicans, Independents. | ||
| I always say when they're protesting, they don't wear a red hat. | ||
| They don't wear a blue hat. | ||
| I'm very tired of people saying the left, the left, the left. | ||
| I come from a family. | ||
| Half of us are Republicans and half of us are Democrats. | ||
| And we can't even have a common conversation besides hanging up on each other. | ||
| And just number two, with the Epstein files, I have daughters. | ||
| I think it's totally disgraceful. | ||
| We know that he's part of that. | ||
| This is why they're covering it. | ||
| If you see his video with the van when he was with one of the talk, I forgot TMZ, whatever. | ||
| This is a cover-up of what is happening to the women of the world, actually. | ||
| And that has to be brought out. | ||
| He's in there. | ||
| All his little friends are in there. | ||
| And number three, real quick, also, like I said, with the Democrats, Republicans, and with the journalists yesterday, just what they did to Jimmy Kimball, all of them, freedom of speech. | ||
| If you don't say the right thing to the Republicans, they don't like you. | ||
| So I hope that everybody that was in those big rallies yesterday, protests, that Democrats, Republican, we're from the same blood. | ||
| When we die, we're going to the same place. | ||
| Do you think God knows where the Republics are Democrats? | ||
| I don't want to get religious. | ||
| But anyway, I just want to say the Epstein files must come out. | ||
| Everybody's name, all those men who abuse these young girls. | ||
| I work in the school district, and I see these women who are talking on all these programs. | ||
| It's disgusting. | ||
| Get those files out. | ||
| If Donald Trump's name is on there, he has to pay. | ||
| What would happen five years from now when we look back and say his name is there, whoever's name is there? | ||
| And we say, why? | ||
| We had a president who was a rapist or whatever. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Have a great evening. | ||
| Have a great day. | ||
| And according to the BBC, it's about 3 million pages. | ||
| 180,000 images and 2,000 videos were posted publicly on Friday. | ||
| Those are from the Epstein files. | ||
| And it's about a month after they were required to be released by law. | ||
| Kevin Eldorado, Illinois, Republican. | ||
| You're on Open Forum. | ||
| Hey, good morning. | ||
| Yes, I'm here to talk about God, country, and about the church thing that happened there in Indianapolis. | ||
| These officers that didn't show up. | ||
| Now, they take an oath to protect and serve. | ||
| If they would have came to that church when it first happened, they probably could have solved a lot of problems before ICE got there. | ||
| Now, how can they not be police officers after they're sworn in to do that job? | ||
| So I feel like they should be arrested with the immigrants for letting it happen and not doing anything about it because it just makes no sense. | ||
| But as far as God goes in our country, the coins, the very first coins, say, in God we trust. | ||
| Our nation was founded on God. | ||
| I want to say a quick prayer if I could. | ||
| I'm a guy who calls in once a month, says the prayer. | ||
| Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. | ||
| Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. | ||
| Give us this day our daily bread. | ||
| Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. | ||
| Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. | ||
| For thy is the kingdom and the power and the glory. | ||
| And God bless the homeless, the hungry, all the people with the bad attitudes about this country. | ||
| If you don't like our country, get out. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Avery, Shelby, North Carolina, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning, young lady. | ||
| Good morning, Day Star, and the true ones scattered abroad throughout the earth. | ||
| How are you? | ||
| Good, Avery. | ||
| Go ahead with your comment. | ||
| Yes, ma'am. | ||
| Well, quickly, in the blink of an eye, we're all gathered here for this day. | ||
| With all things going on, as was foretold, this is an antichrist world where at the beginning, the first sin, cons, or came in the garden until now, hate and darkness, evil rulers reign. | ||
| But this is the youngest nation kingdom, which was built upon false knowledge, false religions, false doctrines, false worshipers. | ||
| They have changed the laws for selfish gain. | ||
| And, you know, quickly, judgment comes from the eternal one, and this nation and everything that it follows and believes in, and the world that follows after them is going to be judged. | ||
| And got that, Avery. | ||
| Let's talk to AJ in Kennesaw, Georgia. | ||
| Democrat, you're on the air. | ||
| Hey, good morning, Mimi. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's a pleasure talking to you. | |
| Real quick regarding the previous segment, I just have a quick question, you know, and what happened in Minneapolis. | ||
| You know, if you're a law-abiding citizen and you're a gun owner and you have your gun on you legally, what are you supposed to do if you walk and you witness a bunch of men beating up or pushing down a woman that could be you, your mother, your daughter? | ||
| I'm just curious. | ||
| What are you supposed to do in that case? | ||
| And then when people come and then you go and you help that person up and you're just helping them up, and then people push you down and get on your back and shoot you. | ||
| What are you supposed to do? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I don't understand what people are looking at. | |
| You know, I'm tired of this demonizing ICU nurse. | ||
| And one other quick question. | ||
|
Police In Schools
00:08:14
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|
unidentified
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Do you remember, and you maybe you can pull this up, the picture of President Trump and his previous administration taking a picture outside of the church in D.C. with the Bible upside down? | |
| You know, I always thought that, you know, in every corporate marketing media situation, you don't release things unless it's the way you want them to be. | ||
| And if that's the case, that would explain a lot of what we see going on because from what I see, this person has broken all of the Ten Commandments. | ||
| Everyone have a blessed weekend. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Independent Line in Terryville, Connecticut. | ||
| Paul, good morning. | ||
| Well, good morning, Mimi. | ||
| You probably remember me from a few other calls, but I'll tell you that the incident of the walkthrough by President Trump Tuesday night before his rally in Iowa was in Urban Dale, the wagon shed restaurant, one of my used to be favorite places. | ||
| But what the management did was they allowed him to walk through there without any questions or anything. | ||
| But there was this one timid lunchgoer who had the audacity to ask him about walking back the domestic terrorist comments from his administrators. | ||
| And he basically called Person a stupid person for asking it. | ||
| And what was ironic was if you did the black and white video or pictures of that, it reminded me of the little Machin, the girl standing beside a leader, an infamous leader in Germany in the 30s. | ||
| I just lost respect for the Iowa people who were so heartless and cool that they would not even consider that their leader was part and parcel to an extrajudicial killing of Alex Predi. | ||
| A lot there, but I want to, before you let me go, I want to say thank you for your professionalism. | ||
| The two interviews that are standout, and everyone should go back and review them. | ||
| The Speaker of the House and then the West Point pollster, retired pollster that you disagree with their militant approach in their way in their handling of facts and getting out the truth, I disagree with them more than any other two people on the face of the earth. | ||
| But you masterfully held your own and you brought out the good and the bad points that they were making. | ||
| So I want to thank you for that. | ||
| And justice goes on. | ||
| There is a subjectivity with law enforcement where there really needs to be strong reforms because nowadays it is the gun. | ||
| It's the person. | ||
| If the police officer says he had motive and intent, then that's the way it is. | ||
| If President Trump says he had motive and intent to commit massacre, that's the way it is. | ||
| So we need to clean that kind of thinking up. | ||
| And it is a dumbing down of the electorate when one party and one leader goes for the dumbest. | ||
| Sorry, Paul. | ||
| And I just got to move on, but thank you for your comments. | ||
| John in Henderson, Nevada, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Hi, good morning. | ||
| Am I on the air? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You are. | |
| Oh, great. | ||
| You have a great show. | ||
| You're my favorite. | ||
| In Las Vegas, I want everybody to listen to this. | ||
| In Las Vegas, we have no problem with school shootings. | ||
| You know why? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because the middle schools are all patrolled by police officers. | |
| At high schools, not only are all high schools patrolled by police officers from the moment they start to the moment they end the day, but we have two police officers from the moment they start to the moment they end. | ||
| Two that not only walk the halls of the school, but ride their bicycles. | ||
| Inside the school, John? | ||
| What's that? | ||
| They ride their bicycles inside the school. | ||
| Yes, the police officers patrol the insides of the schools every single high school. | ||
| And they stop at first for the kids randomly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
When the halls of kids are full, the police officers randomly will go up to a kid and say, I want to check your backpack. | |
| We have police officers on high schools. | ||
| We don't have shootings in Las Vegas. | ||
| Las Vegas is safe as heck, and that's because we increased security. | ||
| What we need to bring back is we need to bring back Rudy Giuliani's Stop and Frisk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
When they implemented that, crime and shootings went down 80%. | |
| Bring it back. | ||
| That's my point. | ||
| Security. | ||
| Lou is a Democrat in Richmond, Virginia. | ||
| Hi, Lou. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How are you doing? | |
| Thank you, and God bless you. | ||
| I want to make a question to the listeners. | ||
| Who's attempted to kill the president, Trump? | ||
| Who tried to kill who killed Charlie Kirk? | ||
| Who is the ones that are taking your social network away from you? | ||
| Who's going against Social Security, your health care? | ||
| Who is the one that killed Martin Luther King? | ||
| What type of people were they? | ||
| Who is the one that tried to killed JFK and RFK? | ||
| Who's the one that started slavery where they would kill babies and put them in the water for the crocodiles? | ||
| It wasn't the blacks. | ||
| It wasn't the immigrants. | ||
| Who were they? | ||
| Who is the one that's rising the food cost? | ||
| Who is the one that raising interest rates where you can't buy a car or a home? | ||
| It's not the blacks or it's not, and it's not the immigrants. | ||
| Who is the ones doing that? | ||
| The real, the obvious reason is the white Christian males are doing that. | ||
| Not the blacks, not the immigrants. | ||
| Who is the one that drove the immigrants from the farms that now we have to bail out the farms because the farmers voted against their own better interest? | ||
| Okay, that's our money. | ||
| Who is the one sending money to Argentina? | ||
| Who is the one that spending $40 billion a year going to Israel? | ||
| It's not the blacks. | ||
| All right, we got that point, Lou. | ||
| Greg in Arizona, Independent Line, you're on the air. | ||
| Good morning, first-time caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I have a comment about your guest, Mr. Pratt. | |
| He connected the Second Amendment with the Boston Tea Party. | ||
| And just factually, there were no amendments under, there were no amendments in effect when the Boston Tea Party happened. | ||
| They were not in effect until the Constitution was ratified, which was after 1787. | ||
| And I just want to make a different point about the Minnesota shooting of Mr. Pretty, and that is gun-carrying laws are under the control of the states and the municipalities. | ||
| And that is a pretty weird case. | ||
| And it might get to the Supreme Court with that right to carry versus him being shot. | ||
| So it's not been clear to me whether he was licensed for open carry or concealed carry. | ||
| I keep hearing different stories on that, but that's a very, very weird case. | ||
| And I think it's going to go far in the legal system. | ||
| And that's all I have to say. | ||
|
Unbiased Exchange
00:03:27
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|
unidentified
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And thank you for doing the great job that C-SPAN does. | |
| Eddie in New York, Republican, you're the last one for open forum. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| To that guy, Doug Paul, blaming everything on white people. | ||
| Who commits the most murders in this country? | ||
| Black people. | ||
| That's just a racist trope that he went off on. | ||
| And Alex Peretti, he was a member of one of those freaks out there to go around attacking the cops. | ||
| And CLM doesn't stand for Black Lives Matter. | ||
| It stands for Black. | ||
| Our last call for open forum. | ||
| And coming up next on Washington Journal, we'll have Omar Nural Dean from the government watchdog group Common Cause. | ||
| He will discuss the Trump administration's push for voter data in Minnesota and other states and the recent FBI raid in Georgia for 2020 ballots. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
| Past president. | ||
|
unidentified
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Why are you doing this? | |
| This is outrageous. | ||
| This is a kangaroo court. | ||
| Fridays, C-SPAN presents a rare moment of unity. | ||
| Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins. | ||
| Politico Playbook chief correspondent and White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns is host of Ceasefire, bringing two leaders from opposite sides of the aisle into a dialogue. | ||
| Ceasefire on the network that doesn't take sides. | ||
| Fridays at 7 and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series, Sunday, with our guest Pulitzer Prize winner and best-selling author John Meacham, who has written numerous books chronicling American history. | ||
| His books include And There Was Light, Thomas Jefferson, and the prize-winning American Lion, Andrew Jackson, in the White House. | ||
| He joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein. | ||
| Watch America's Book Club with John Meacham, Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN is as unbiased as you can get. | ||
| You are so fair. | ||
| I don't know how anybody can say otherwise. | ||
|
unidentified
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You guys do the most important work for everyone in this country. | |
| I love C-SPAN because I get to hear all the voices. | ||
| You bring these divergent viewpoints and you present both sides of an issue and you allow people to make up their own minds. | ||
| I absolutely love C-SPAN. | ||
|
unidentified
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I love to hear both sides. | |
| I've watched C-SPAN every morning and it is unbiased and you bring in factual information for the callers to understand where they are in their comments. | ||
| It's probably the only place that we can hear honest opinion of Americans across the country. | ||
| You guys at C-SPAN are doing such a wonderful job of allowing free exchange of ideas without a lot of interruptions. | ||
| Thank you, C-SPAN, for being a light in the dark. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
|
Tulsi Gabbard's Role Clarified
00:15:37
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| Joining us now to talk about the Trump administration's push for voter data is Omar Noradine. | ||
| He is senior VP for policy and litigation strategy at Common Cause. | ||
| Omar, welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mimi. | |
| Just remind us of your organization and its mission. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, Common Cause is a nonpartisan grassroots organization that holds power accountable and serves as the people's lobby here in Washington, D.C. and in state houses around the country. | |
| So when we talk about voter roles, voter data, what are we actually talking about? | ||
| What kind of information is in those, is in that data? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| So, you know, when you register to vote, you turn over a bunch of data to the state, including, you know, your full legal name, your address, sometimes driver's license numbers, and your social security number. | ||
| Some states require party identification, you know, when you register to vote, so it could be which party you're affiliated with. | ||
| And the state keeps track of who votes. | ||
| So when you show up to a polling location and are given a ballot, that is recorded. | ||
| And so all of that information is in an individual's voter file. | ||
| And the government, the state governments, keep records of that over time. | ||
| But not who you voted for, just that you actually did vote. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| So why does the Justice Department want that kind of data? | ||
| What could they do with it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So there's the stated reasons that they've said that they wanted it, and I think some of the real reasons that they have said out loud in certain contexts, but not in the litigation. | |
| And so what the Justice Department has said is that they're looking at election integrity. | ||
| They want to make sure that these voter rolls are up to date and that there aren't folks on them who shouldn't be on them. | ||
| The problem with that is, is that it is up to the states, not the federal government, to keep and maintain voter roles. | ||
| And so what we believe the Justice Department wants to do is related to what we've seen since the beginning of this administration, which is conduct mass surveillance on folks. | ||
| This is related to what Doge did during the first several months of the administration where they were trying to access Medicaid data, social security data. | ||
| Actually, the Justice Department had to disclose in a recent case around Social Security data that some of the Dogebroses, I like to call them, had been chopping around agreements with advocacy groups to quote unquote overturn elections using Social Security data. | ||
| And so this administration does not have the trust of the American people to keep their data safe and to use it for its intended purposes. | ||
| Now, before we get to the situation in Georgia, I want to mention the situation in Minnesota. | ||
| Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, had, this is the Washington Post, Bondi presses Minnesota for voter data as administration escalates pressure on blue states. | ||
| She had linked de-escalation in Minnesota to the handing over of voter data from that state. | ||
| Can you explain what they were trying to get and how many states have already handed over that data? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure, I'll back up just a bit. | |
| So apparently the Justice Department has said that they've asked every state for their voter roles. | ||
| Organizations that have been tracking this have been able to verify 44 letters from the Justice Department, the Civil Rights Division where I served in the last administration as a political appointee, to hand over those voter roles. | ||
| Similar tracking has said that maybe up to about 10 states, eight to 10 states, have turned over that voter information, including states like Texas and Indiana. | ||
| And several states have refused to turn over that information. | ||
| And subsequently, the Justice Department has sued those states. | ||
| And Common Cause has intervened on behalf of voters to protect that data and to stop the Justice Department from getting it, including in Minnesota. | ||
| We are in litigation in Minnesota to protect voters' data there. | ||
| And the letter from Pam Bondi to the governor right after Alex Predi was killed, I think is a callous action by the Attorney General rather than talk about the ways in which they can keep people safe in Minnesota. | ||
| She basically was coercing him and the state to say, if you do these three things, we will take the gun, metaphorical and literal guns out of your city. | ||
| I want to talk about what happened in Georgia this week. | ||
| There was an FBI raid. | ||
| There was a search warrant at the Georgia Elections Office. | ||
| And President Trump has said this. | ||
| This is politico. | ||
| Trump says individuals will soon be prosecuted for 2020 election. | ||
| It says Trump has repeatedly and falsely claimed that former President Joe Biden did not actually win the 2020 presidential election. | ||
| Can you just update us on what happened in Georgia and what information was actually seized? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So in Georgia, the FBI and other law enforcement federal law enforcement took ballot boxes, essentially, from the Fulton County Elections Office, which keeps the ballots from previous elections for auditing purposes, other types of election security purposes. | |
| How long are they supposed to keep that? | ||
| Because that's been five years. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's been five years. | |
| I don't know the exact number of years that they keep this sort of data, but these are like physical, you know, physical things that were taken. | ||
| It's not just like electronic data. | ||
| Like these are actual ballots, actual containers that contain this sort of information. | ||
| And if you've seen the videos, you can see the warehouse is fairly large. | ||
| And Trump, I think, the president is still obsessed with 2020, but I believe, and I think the evidence would suggest that the rest of the folks around him are using this as a trial run. | ||
| So while Trump may be still kind of stuck in 2020 land, the folks around him are planning for 2026 and 2028. | ||
| And I believe that this was an ability to see like what can we get away with? | ||
| What would a judge sign? | ||
| What kind of sworn affidavits do we need to produce in order for a judge to sign a warrant to be able to access this sort of thing? | ||
| What will public pressure think? | ||
| What will the public think about this? | ||
| Will there be public pressure? | ||
| Will there be not? | ||
| What litigation will come out of this? | ||
| Can we figure out ways to get around the litigation to prevent this sort of access of ballots from previous elections? | ||
| All as a way to figure out what they want to do in 2026 and 2028, because I believe that the Trump administration is afraid of a free and fair election in 2026. | ||
| There's also the issue of the security of those ballots. | ||
| So how secure are they in this facility in Georgia? | ||
| And how secure are they now that they're in the FBI's hands? | ||
| Can they be tampered with in any way, either from Georgia officials or from federal officials? | ||
|
unidentified
|
State elections are run throughout the year, every year. | |
| Sometimes that's federal elections, sometimes it's local municipal elections. | ||
| And they're pretty good at keeping their ballots and related information safe. | ||
| There hasn't been any evidence that state elections officials are tampering with ballots. | ||
| And so all of this is part of the Trump administration's lie that they've been peddling since 2020. | ||
| And now that this information is in the FBI, which is led by Kash Patel, who has shown also not to be a credible or trusted voice on law enforcement issues, Tulsi Gabbard, similarly, not a trusted or credible source on these issues, that there is real concern that they'll use the information they have, potentially manipulate it, potentially lie about what they have found. | ||
| And we've seen from the Fed chair to state's attorneys general to Don Lemon that the Trump administration will prosecute people out of political vengeance. | ||
| Speaking of Tulsi Gabbard, that's the director of national intelligence. | ||
| She was actually there on site at the Fulton County election office rate. | ||
| This is Virginia Democrat Mark Warner. | ||
| He is the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. | ||
| He said this about that, and then we'll talk about it. | ||
| We all know the Trump administration's strategy is throw as much shit on the wall and see what sticks. | ||
| While the nation was still grieving ISIS rogues' actions in Minneapolis, yesterday, the Trump administration, in a move that should scare the hell out of all of us, went to seize election materials from the 2020 election that Donald Trump lost in Fulton County, Georgia. | ||
| What does this mean for the fall? | ||
| And what should particularly concern us is, guess who showed up at this FBI raid? | ||
| Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. | ||
| Tulsi Gabbard has nothing to do with election security. | ||
| Tulsi Gabbard has even been in charge of dismantling what was called the Foreign Malign Influence Center to try to make sure foreign countries don't interfere in our elections. | ||
| This complete Trump loyalist somehow popping up on an FBI raid, what the heck was she doing? | ||
| We ought to stand up and step up against ICE. | ||
| We also got to stand up and step up to protect our elections coming this year. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The senator makes a lot of good points. | |
| The election security doesn't fall under Tulsi Gabbard's purview. | ||
| And it's rich really coming from the Trump administration to talk about election security when they dismantled an agency called CISA. | ||
| And I've been in D.C. too long when I can't remember the names. | ||
| I just think. | ||
| The Commission Security Infrastructure Security Agency. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There you go. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| They've dismantled CISA and the critical funds that it doles out to election officials across the country to be able to keep our elections safe and secure from cyber attacks and from foreign influence. | ||
| And so Tulsi Gabbard is engaging in mission creep, but we all know that the folks around the president himself are eager to please him. | ||
| And this sounds like an internal PR stunt for Tulsi Gabbard. | ||
| If you'd like to join our conversation with Omar Noor, Dean of Common Cause, you can start calling in now. | ||
| Democrats are on 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| Well, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch was asked about DNI's Tulsi Gabbard's presence at that raid, and this is what he said. | ||
| Can you explain Tulsi Gabbard's role in DOJ activities? | ||
| Could you please explain Tulsi Gabbard's role in DOJ activity regarding the Fulton County search? | ||
| What do you mean her role? | ||
| It was reported that she happened to be present in Atlanta. | ||
| I mean, yes, I saw the same photos you did. | ||
| I mean, she's not, she doesn't work for the Department of Justice or the FBI. | ||
| She's an extraordinarily important part of this administration. | ||
| This administration coordinates everything we do as a group. | ||
| And so I think her presence shouldn't be, there shouldn't be questioned. | ||
| Of course, that's a big part of her job. | ||
| And so the fact that she was present in Atlanta that day is something that shouldn't surprise anybody. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Chairman Max Mongrel is then we'll. | |
| All right, just two more. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just following up on that. | |
| So are you saying that Gabbard's appearance in that area had nothing to do with the Justice Department action, the fact that Gabbard? | ||
| I most certainly did not say that. | ||
| No, I did not say that. | ||
| I said that exactly the opposite. | ||
| I said this administration works closely together in all kinds of different areas. | ||
| And so I'm not sure if there's surprise that the administration is working together on things like election integrity. | ||
| But if there is surprise, let me unequivocally state, we are working together as an administration on election integrity type issues. | ||
| And so that's all I can say about that. | ||
| What do you make of the Justice Department and the intelligence community working together on election integrity? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the Deputy Attorney General's statements kind of tracked what I said, that it sounds like she just happened to be there and wanted a publicity stunt. | |
| You know, in general, it makes sense for the government to work together, right? | ||
| We've seen that government is better when resources are kind of pooled in a way that is efficient. | ||
| But sometimes, if the leaders at the top are ones that we shouldn't be able to trust or we can't trust, it's really concerning when various parts of the government that don't usually work together on a specific issue here voting are working together because we know that they are potentially trying to do things to undermine our elections. | ||
| Let's talk to callers and we'll start with Kurt in New Jersey, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, good morning. | |
| Thank you for C-SPAN. | ||
| Like everybody else, Mimi, you might be the best. | ||
| You know, I was searching, there's so many topics, you know, I'd like to stay on topic if I can. | ||
| But I looked up sanctuary cities, you know, asked a couple AIs a question: is it legal or sanctuary cities legal? | ||
| And the word generally came up twice. | ||
| So generally, we follow the law. | ||
| So I'm guessing you trusted everything Joe Biden did and the Democrats do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, we pick sides. | |
| But let's be honest, I'm not a Democrat or Republican because I don't want to be labeled or the Republicans may be audited more. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think that was proven under Obama. | |
| Do you, I have a couple questions for you. | ||
| A Dominion never divulged their secrets. | ||
| The Frank, of the Mike Lindell site, Frank speech had quite compelling evidence against the fair election. | ||
| And then I have a question for you. | ||
| Do you trust the China election process or the Russian election process? | ||
| Kurt, you mean in Russia and in China? | ||
| Their elections in their countries? | ||
| Is that what you're asking? | ||
| If I were to listen to your guest, he's going to tell me that our elections are totally up and up. | ||
| You know, it's like Roberts, the Supreme Court justice. | ||
| He was the Chief Justice, and there was a case right before January 6th that Pennsylvania had more votes than actual registered voters. | ||
| Okay, let's take that up, Kurt. | ||
| You got a couple of things there for us. | ||
|
Concerns About Election Privacy
00:15:27
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|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| So I think we'll start with the sanctuary cities. | ||
| I think the issue here is that our immigration system has failed. | ||
| And what we're seeing coming out of the Department of Homeland Security, ICE, and even the need for cities to pass sanctuary city laws is all part of a complete failure by Congress to pass meaningful immigration reform that keeps our country safe and ensures that people that are here and are vital contributors to our country, immigrants, that those folks have an ability to be here lawfully. | ||
| And so you can't separate these pieces. | ||
| On the piece about China and Russia, I don't think China and Russia have free and fair elections. | ||
| And I believe that the last elections we had, the 2016 elections, Trump won the 2016 election. | ||
| Joe Biden won the 2020 election and Trump won the 2024 election. | ||
| I'm very comfortable to say that. | ||
| What I fear is that Trump now and the folks around him are trying to undermine the 2026 and potentially 2028 election. | ||
| And what I'm doing, what Common Cause is doing, what others are doing, are trying to make sure that that doesn't happen. | ||
| Because we want free and fair elections in this country. | ||
| We don't want to be China. | ||
| We don't want to be Russia. | ||
| No, he did mention Pennsylvania in 2020, the allegation that there were more votes cast than there are people or registered voters in Pennsylvania. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm not sure exactly which case he's referring to. | |
| There were cases coming out of 2024 around voter rolls, and states were taking folks out of the voter rolls within 90 days of an election, which there are certain laws, including the National Voter Registration Act, that prevents what colloquially are called voter purges so close to an election in case of mistakes. | ||
| And the Supreme Court said in a case coming out of Virginia that they weren't going to mess with it because it was too close to the election. | ||
| Here's Tony Lansing, Illinois. | ||
| Democrat, good morning, Tony. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My question is, how concerned are you? | ||
| You've kind of addressed it, but it's such an important issue. | ||
| It's vital and core to our democracy. | ||
| How concerned are you that what happened in Georgia could happen on Election Day? | ||
| And secondly, how confident can we be in our election system when both sides aren't involved in this process that they're going through? | ||
| Thanks, Tony. | ||
| I am concerned that what happened in Georgia will happen on Election Day or after Election Day in key districts in key states. | ||
| As I mentioned earlier, that I think that this was kind of a test run to see what they can get away with, what kind of public pressure might they have to deal with if this happens again. | ||
| And so this is really concerning. | ||
| I'm not quite sure what you meant by both sides engaging in this sort of thing. | ||
| I'm not aware of during the last presidential administration them seizing ballot boxes, but it's really concerning. | ||
| On the Republican line in Virginia Beach, Virginia, David, you're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, hello. | |
| I'm a certified public accountant. | ||
| I've been auditing for over 35 years. | ||
| The first thing they teach you at auditing school is that you cannot rely on the results unless the internal controls are working. | ||
| So my question to you, and I have a lot of questions for you, so I hope you won't cut me off because I have quite a bit to throw at you. | ||
| I'm anxious to hear your response. | ||
| So is it fair to say internal controls over the registration of voters, maintenance of voter rolls, casting and counting of ballots, especially with all these mail-in ballots, were insufficient for the American people and Donald J. Trump to rely on the published results of the election? | ||
| Okay, let's take that up, David. | ||
| Okay, internal controls. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Various states have different types of requirements in order to register to vote and what they need to bring to a polling place when they do cast a ballot. | |
| And there has been no evidence, no credible evidence by several state audits, external research, that the United States has a widespread issue of voter fraud. | ||
| At the same time, there are cases where folks are voting in very limited cases. | ||
| I think some of the research shows like less than 0.1%. | ||
| And those people are prosecuted. | ||
| They are prosecuted and have been prosecuted by both Democrats and Republicans, by the federal government, and by state and local government. | ||
| The system is working the way that it should work. | ||
| And There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud or that the internal controls that we currently have are insufficient. | ||
| What can we expect from coming after this FBI raid? | ||
| I understand they took like 700 boxes. | ||
| Are they going to recount the ballots? | ||
| What are they looking for? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think they're looking for a story that they can tell that feeds what the president has been saying since 2020, that he should have won that election and that there is some sort of malfeasance that took place that prevented him from winning that election. | |
| As we know, he had called during the 2020 election time, the Secretary of State in Georgia, on a phone call that many of us have heard or read a transcript of. | ||
| He said, I need X number of more votes. | ||
| And so I believe that he's looking for those votes. | ||
| And if they don't show up, which they won't, that they'll make up some story to please the president. | ||
| Jerry is on the independent line, Somerset, Kentucky. | ||
| Good morning, Jerry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I got three quick questions I'll make as quick as I can. | ||
| Is it true that the reason that so many voters, black voters, use loader boxes is because the lines are so long, sometimes from three to five hours. | ||
| Number two, is it true that when they pull the voters, when they checked the voter votes last time, after the last election, they only found one bad vote out of 179,000 votes. | ||
| And that was the only person that was convicted. | ||
| And what's the third one? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The third one is, is it true that there's only one voter box in some of the black areas for every 100,000 populous? | |
| 100,000 voters, as opposed to as low as 16 in a lot of the white districts. | ||
| Thank you for my time. | ||
| All right, Jerry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Jerry. | |
| Those were great questions. | ||
| I'll take one and three together. | ||
| There are problems with the way in which we run elections in certain states. | ||
| For example, in Georgia, it is a common problem for really long lines. | ||
| And the state has engaged in lawmaking that makes it even harder to vote. | ||
| So some folks may be familiar with the cases around line relief, which is basically folks bringing water, bringing pizza to folks waiting in hours long line to be able to vote. | ||
| And we have seen, and there's been litigation around this, around those sorts of long lines in communities of color, in black communities, in Latino communities. | ||
| And so this is a real problem. | ||
| And we should be trying to make it easier for people to vote. | ||
| We should have a day off so that people aren't juggling work and other things to be able to vote. | ||
| Voting is essential for fair representation in our country. | ||
| And on your question about the number of, I think you said bad votes, I think that goes back to what I said earlier, that there isn't a problem of widespread voter fraud or any sort of malfeasance in our elections. | ||
| And when there are folks who voted who shouldn't have voted, those folks are prosecuted. | ||
| Shelly is up next. | ||
| Democrat, Springfield, Virginia. | ||
| Hi, Shelly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, can you hear me? | |
| Yes, we can. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, hi. | |
| Omer, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I worked for decades in the federal government in the field of, I was a mathematical statistician who worked in the field of statistical disclosure limitation. | ||
| And, you know, my wheelhouse, my world revolved around things like the Privacy Act of 1974, SHITSI, a whole bunch of other regulations and laws that applied to the protection of data. | ||
| And one thing about the U.S. federal system that people might not understand, federal data system, is that all the data is fairly disaggregated. | ||
| It's not in one big monster database so that we can track you, right? | ||
| And there's a reason for that. | ||
| And what I've been scared is hearing, you mentioned this in your introduction, is hearing about this idea of grabbing a lot of data and combining it together so that you have a lot of data on everybody in the country. | ||
| And the voter roles are just extreme PII being exposed. | ||
| And when the Doge guys got into Social Security, as you mentioned, there's now reports of them violating a lot of those laws, right? | ||
| Privacy Act, for instance. | ||
| So what do you think about this whole situation? | ||
| And was it explicit say in Project 2025 that they were going to try to do something like this, right? | ||
| I just, it scares me quite a bit as somebody who worked in this field for decades, right? | ||
| That this is happening. | ||
| And I don't know how to sort of process what I think is like an underreported, scary thing that we all could be affected by at some point, including as it pertains to elections. | ||
| So that's kind of my question. | ||
| All right, Shelly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks, Shelly. | |
| You make really great points. | ||
| The federal government has data privacy laws, the Privacy Act being one of them. | ||
| Many states have state privacy laws that are essential to keeping folks' private information safe. | ||
| And what DOJ is doing here is trying to create a massive aggregate voter database and then pull in other information from other parts of the federal government. | ||
| So what you described as a disaggregated system, they're trying to aggregate all that across things like the DHS SAVE database, the social security information. | ||
| I think in Bondi's letter to Governor Walls, she also asked for SNAP data. | ||
| So this is, you know, this food nutrition program. | ||
| They're trying to amass a system where they can identify folks, voters, to a level of precision that could allow for intimidation around folks, depending on, let's say, where they are, how they registered to vote, which elections did they vote in. | ||
| You could imagine ICE agents showing up in certain communities where there is more Democrats than Republicans and that they go house to house based on information they have from the voter roles that they are trying to. | ||
| So this is really important. | ||
| And I hear you about this not being reported in a way. | ||
| I think Mimi's here having us talk about this. | ||
| And I'll go on any show and talk about this. | ||
| Let's go to Heartland, Wisconsin next. | ||
| Republican Mike, good morning. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| So there was rumblings leading up to the certification of 2020 that I believe it was Arizona was not going to certify their results. | ||
| Therefore, it would have halted the whole process. | ||
| And then how convenient that there's a huge insurrection, as the left would like to call it. | ||
| But now we know that there were 200 FBI plainclothes agents. | ||
| But Christopher Ray said that he had no idea. | ||
| And pull up the 2024 voting map and how everything laid out. | ||
| The states that Como won have zero voter ID requirements. | ||
| So that is something that I think should at least be talked about. | ||
| It's interesting, if nothing else, that the states that don't require you to prove who you are went blue. | ||
| What do you think, Omar? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think there's making some causal inferences here instead of correlation. | |
| And I'll say that in 2020, we had congressional investigations. | ||
| We had independent counsels that looked at the 2020 election. | ||
| And there was no evidence that there was any malfeasance or anything that went wrong on a way that would have changed the outcome of the 2020 elections. | ||
| The United States Supreme Court, which has been very favorable to the president with three of his appointed justices on the Supreme Court, did not take up issues around the 2020 election. | ||
| Every federal court that looked at this issue, including ones with judges appointed by President Trump himself, did not find any evidence that merited the cases going forward. | ||
| So 2020 is closed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Joe Biden won the 2020 election. | |
| And to your point about which states voted for Kamala, which states voted for Trump in 2024, Trump won 2024. | ||
| There were states that voted for Joe Biden in 2020 that then turned to Trump in 2024, including Michigan. | ||
| And so this, I think you're raising issues around the election results in 2024 that are irrelevant and wouldn't change the outcome of that election. | ||
| But what do you think about voter ID laws and how strict they should be? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think we need to make it easier for people to vote. | |
| That is something that is essential to get participation, to get young people. | ||
| Voter ID laws have been shown in litigation and in research and just everyday common sense to disproportionately impact young people, to impact naturalized citizens, to impact low-income folks, to impact rural folks, white, black, Latino, Asian, regardless of your race or ethnicity. | ||
| And in my view, we want more people to be able to participate in our system. | ||
| And as I mentioned earlier, we have internal controls to make sure that folks who shouldn't be voting in our elections aren't voting in our elections. | ||
|
Voter ID Laws Controversy
00:04:24
|
||
| On the independent line, Brad is in Washington, D.C. Good morning, Brad. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning from the nation's capital. | |
| Yeah, Omar. | ||
| Well, actually, C-SPAN, I'm very disappointed in C-SPAN this morning. | ||
| You have a conspiracy theorist on for the left. | ||
| I mean, are you going to bring on Alex Jones to sort of, you know, talk about right points to come back with this guy? | ||
| So, Brad, why do you think Omar is a conspiracy theorist? | ||
| Go ahead and lay out your thoughts on that. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, because he's talking about all this information that you need to give when you register to vote, Social Security number, driver's license number. | |
| They're all government numbers. | ||
| The government already has them. | ||
| And he's talking like, hey, if you have to give the government this information, they're going to have this information. | ||
| And then he says, ICE is going to come door to door for people. | ||
| I mean, that's right out of Alex Jones' book there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, this guy is so far left that C-SPAN should put on a little caveat saying this is merely this guy's opinion and not to be taken as fact. | |
| Because people are listening to this show and they're saying, hey, I heard this on C-SPAN, which is a legitimate station. | ||
| They're going to believe this guy. | ||
| And let's viewing his opinion. | ||
| So let's, we definitely have lots of guests that give their own opinions. | ||
| Brad, that is not new, but let's have a response. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Brad, I said at the top of this program that I believe the election results in 2016, 2020, and 2024 were all free and fair. | |
| And what I'm talking about is wanting to make sure that we continue to have free and fair elections. | ||
| Just this morning, there's reporting around ICE not needing warrants to go into people's homes, not needing judicial warrants to go into people's homes, and to be able to arrest people without warrants, without even administrative warrants. | ||
| And so, what I'm talking about isn't conjecture. | ||
| These are memos that are signed by the acting director of ICE, Director Lyons. | ||
| And that isn't conjecture or theory, it's fact. | ||
| The director of ICE has said that you do not need a warrant to arrest people and that you don't need a judicial warrant signed by a neutral judge to be able to go into people's homes. | ||
| They are currently doing this. | ||
| And Omar, we'll just show that on the screen real quick. | ||
| Here is the headline that you're referring to. | ||
| It says, ICE expands the power of agents to arrest people without warrants. | ||
| It says an internal memo changed the standard from whether people are unlikely to show up for hearings to whether they could leave the scene. | ||
| Okay, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And then, related to the information, you're correct. | |
| Social Security, your number, your driver's license number are government information. | ||
| But as our previous caller, I believe Shelley talked about, who worked in the federal government for many years, that all that information isn't centralized within the federal government. | ||
| This is information that state governments have. | ||
| And the fact that DOJ has gone state by state asking for this information is evidence that DOJ currently does not have this information. | ||
| And there are laws, both state laws and federal laws, that protect this sort of information from being shared within the federal government. | ||
| That is also fact. | ||
| That is not theory. | ||
| Let's talk to Mark next in New York. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I'd like to ask a question about the post office, about post-dating, because this is something new that came out for mail and election. | ||
| And I think that's, yeah, I forgot the other one. | ||
| Okay, we'll take that. | ||
| Quickly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Folks should try to vote as early as possible. | ||
| Mail in voting has been shown to be safe and secure. | ||
| And the earlier you vote, the more likely it will get to where it needs to get in order to be counted. | ||
| We want our elections and our election results to be tallied quickly so that we can have greater confidence in our elections. | ||
| And so what the post office is doing shouldn't stop people from voting by mail as soon as they get their ballot. | ||
|
Welcome To Ceasefire
00:00:46
|
||
| That's Omar Noora Dean, Senior VP for Policy and Litigation Strategy at Common Cause. | ||
| They're on commoncause. | ||
| Thanks so much for joining us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mimi. | |
| And that does it for us today on Washington Journal. | ||
| We'll see you again tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. Eastern, as usual, here on C-SPAN. | ||
| Coming up next is Ceasefire. | ||
| And thanks so much for joining us. | ||
| We'll talk to you tomorrow. | ||
| Welcome to Ceasefire, where we seek to bridge the divide in American politics. | ||
| I'm Dasha Burns, Politico White House Bureau Chief. | ||