| Time | Text |
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Addressing Nuclear Concerns
00:01:40
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| Both sides need to be more flexible. | |
| Both sides need to zero in on what the most important areas of agreement are that would solve the most urgent nonproliferation issues. | |
| So it was a longer conversation, but I hope that they continue to work at this. | |
| This is an important issue still. | |
| And we have We have negotiated with the Iranians in the past. | |
| There was the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that Trump pulled out of. | |
| It was very effective in holding back Iran's pathways to the bomb blocking the pathways. | |
| But Donald Trump pulled out of it in 2018. | |
| So it's now on him to address this issue. | |
| And I hope it is done diplomatically rather than with more bombs in a new war in the Middle East. | |
| Our guest website is armscontrol.org. | |
| Darrell Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association. | |
| Thanks for your time. | |
| Thank you. | |
| That's it for our program today. | |
| A new edition of Washington Journal comes your way at 7 o'clock tomorrow morning. | |
| Ceasefire is next. | |
| Welcome to Ceasefire, where we try to bridge the divide in American politics. | |
| I'm Dasha Burns, Politico White House Bureau Chief, and joining me now, two guests who have agreed to keep the conversation civil, even when they disagree. | |
|
Immigration Enforcement Dilemmas
00:15:53
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| Chad Wolf, acting Homeland Security Secretary during the first Trump administration, and John Sandwig, acting ICE Director during the Obama administration. | |
| Thank you both so much for joining me. | |
| I feel very lucky to have your expertise here today. | |
| People who have worked on immigration enforcement, one under a Democrat, one under a Republican. | |
| Immigration is obviously the story of the moment, gentlemen. | |
| So I do want to start with your experience. | |
| Chad, talk about leading DHS. | |
| What were the big takeaways and how do you see this moment playing out? | |
| Obviously, it's a challenging department. | |
| It's our third largest department in the federal government. | |
| It's got a variety of mission sets. | |
| So, you know, my challenge leading that organization is in one minute, you could be talking about cybersecurity, the next minute, immigration, Coast Guard, TSA, travel security, and so a lot of different missions. | |
| Obviously, the mission today that's in the limelight is obviously that border security and more specifically, the immigration mission as far as removal of individuals. | |
| So President Trump was very clear on his intentions to govern as a president during the campaign, which was to make sure that the border was secure and that you were removing individuals that didn't have a legal right to be here. | |
| And so what we've seen over the first year of the Trump presidency is nothing but remarkable progress on both of those fronts, particularly on the border. | |
| The apprehension numbers are low. | |
| There's very few, if any, catch and release into the country. | |
| And now their real challenge is removals that we see every day is locating these individuals. | |
| Well, first of all, prioritizing locating and then sending agents and officers out to effectuate those removals, then putting them on planes and getting them to either their home country or a safe third country for removal. | |
| So very complex organization and a very complex mission. | |
| Yeah, John, what about running ICE? | |
| What were some of those lessons learned and what is important for Americans to understand in this moment? | |
| Yeah, Dosh, I think there's a lot of misconceptions out there about how immigration works in this country in the immigration challenges we face in the nation. | |
| First of all, I just want to echo what Chad said, though. | |
| I spent four years at the Department of Homeland Security before going over to ICE, and it was a tremendous privilege to work there. | |
| There are a lot of responsibilities, and I think it's an agency that doesn't get the respect that it deserves, right? | |
| I think it gets a little bit of a bad rap. | |
| But on the immigration problem, I think we have to remember there's different. | |
| Let's start with who the undocumented immigrants are in this country. | |
| And very quickly, Dasha, the majority of what we call undocumented immigrants, people who just have no immigration status at all, no meaningful claim to be able to stay in this country. | |
| It's a population that's been here a long time. | |
| Roughly, I would guesstimate roughly 75% or about 8 to 10 million of the undocuments, of the about 12 million, who fall into this category, have been in this country really since at least before 2015, and many of them much longer than that. | |
| So, during those years, they've integrated into our society, right? | |
| They've married U.S. citizens, they've had children who are U.S. citizens. | |
| And that lies at the heart of ICE's challenge when you're doing immigration enforcement: you have these laws that have been on the books that say these people are deportable because they lack immigration status. | |
| But when you go to deport them and they have no criminal history and they have these deep ties that go to churches in our country, they have co-workers who they work side by side with, their kids go to school together. | |
| It is very challenging for the agency to enforce the laws against that population. | |
| So, traditionally, and under the Obama administration, of course, the focus was let's focus on the worst of the worst. | |
| Let's focus on those criminal actors first. | |
| And you saw a real shift in immigration enforcement to where the focus first was on prisons and jails, making sure we have that ability to know anybody who's booked into a prison and jail, we can determine their immigration status and then put them into removal proceedings. | |
| But, of course, there's a separate issue of what do you do with this at-large population. | |
| And I think the challenge, Dasha, is that there are not nearly as many criminals, and the organization doesn't find as many criminals as I think the public expects. | |
| I feel like there's widespread consensus in America that we should be focused on getting those bad actors out of the country and securing that border. | |
| But it's a lot, it becomes a lot more controversial when you're enforcing the law against those individuals who don't have a criminal history or nothing meaningful, right? | |
| They might have a traffic offense or something of that nature. | |
| But just put it in perspective quickly, if you look at the data in 2018 and 2019, during Chad's time leading the department, ICE only made 40,000 at-large arrests in those years. | |
| Only about 25,000 of those individuals have been charged with or convicted, or 30,000 of them have been charged with or convicted of a crime. | |
| And when we look at the types of crimes that ICE traditionally finds, and this was the same challenges we faced in the Obama administration, primarily they are not your most serious crimes. | |
| It's DUIs, it's traffic offenses like driving without a license or immigration-related offenses. | |
| But in any event, what we are seeing now, of course, has been a shift in tactics that has really put the agency under more pressure than it's ever been before. | |
| I do think this is a crucial juncture for ICE's future, for DHS's future. | |
| You're seeing a lot of people talking about abolishing ICE or unwinding the Department of Homeland Security. | |
| I think there's a pathway for the president to fulfill his promise of a more bolstered enforcement, but using tactics that are going to be less controversial than we're seeing right now in Minneapolis. | |
| And I just hope that we start to see a transition back to that more targeted approach, which is not any less enforcement-minded, but is going to result in a lot more safety, keep the officers a lot safer, keep the public safer, and reduce the temperature. | |
| Yeah, there's so much to dig into there. | |
| And, Chad, I do wonder, you know, John brought up what was happening during your time acting in that role. | |
| How different is the job in this moment compared to that and the differences? | |
| Yeah, different challenges. | |
| If you remember, during the first Trump administration, it was about how do you secure the border? | |
| If you recall, you had caravans coming to the border and people trying to get over it. | |
| That's not the focus anymore. | |
| It's not. | |
| And so, it's actually been a switch, right? | |
| Because the focus was the border during the first term. | |
| And yes, we did focus on deportations, but that was not the primary focus. | |
| It was actually trying to figure out stopping the individuals illegally coming into the country. | |
| They've solved that problem, right, here in the second term. | |
| And now the focus is: okay, what do you do with the millions of folks, some of which John mentioned, that came across during the four years of the Biden administration? | |
| The American people said we want them removed. | |
| And now the question is prioritization. | |
| Well, I'm hearing a lot from John about what the Obama administration was doing. | |
| The rhetoric sounds similar to what this administration is saying, which is worst of the worst first, prisons and jails. | |
| But the reality that we're seeing on the ground doesn't necessarily be. | |
| Well, the reality is it's a little complicated, right? | |
| Because not only do you have hardened criminals that, again, I think, or at least we hear everyone wants out of their communities, and we can talk about sanctuary cities and things of that nature. | |
| But there are also a million, maybe a million and a half folks here that are on a final order of removal. | |
| Not all of those individuals are criminals. | |
| There are some people that could be here for years, but they have a final order of removal. | |
| ICE should be removing those individuals. | |
| But as John indicated, that's tough. | |
| They've been in the community for a long period of time, but that's the law. | |
| So unless they change the law, unless they tell ICE that a final order of removal, you don't have to remove those folks. | |
| It's ICE's job. | |
| In fact, it's their mission to remove individuals that have been through due process, have gone to an immigration judge, have likely gone to an immigration board of appeals judge, perhaps even a circuit judge. | |
| In all those cases, the judge says you don't have a legal right to be here. | |
| You need to deport yourself. | |
| If you don't, you will be removed. | |
| And those are also some of the individuals that ICE needs to go out and remove from the country. | |
| Final orders of removal, very important. | |
| They're not all criminals. | |
| Some are, undoubtedly, but they do have a mission. | |
| So I think the larger here issue is maybe we don't like ICE deporting certain people. | |
| Well, that's a question for Congress. | |
| It's not a question for ICE. | |
| ICE is a law enforcement agency, and they have a mission given to them by the law that they need to execute on. | |
| And that's what they're doing. | |
| Let's talk about tactics for a moment because that is largely the fight that is playing out in Congress, as you mentioned, Chad. | |
| Congress is at odds over future DHS funding. | |
| And Speaker Mike Johnson expressed some optimism at getting a deal with Democrats. | |
| Bloomberg writes that he voiced confidence that Congress will agree on measures to restrain federal immigration enforcement after a national outcry over the killings of two U.S. citizens in Minnesota. | |
| First of all, John, some of the demands that Democrats are making, that includes ending roving patrols, enforce accountability, masks off, body cameras on, among other requirements. | |
| Do you think that Democrats are pushing for the right things in the right way right now? | |
| I think there's some good things in there, Dasha. | |
| Look, I would like to see ICE figure out a way to deal with the masks. | |
| I'm very sensitive to the safety and the protection of the officers and why they want their anonymity. | |
| You know, we are in an environment now where they can face individual threats themselves or their family members can get arrested. | |
| I'm very sympathetic to that. | |
| On the other hand, though, you can't have a law enforcement agency that's routinely wearing masks. | |
| Traditionally, it just didn't come up very often during my time at DHS. | |
| And the only times that agents would wear masks would be if they're working undercover operations on the side and there were real risks if they were identified as a federal agent. | |
| But I think the harder thing, Dasha, is it's really hard to legislate the things that matter the most when it comes to this immigration enforcement. | |
| In my mind, I think one of the most important things is targeting, right? | |
| And I, you know, Chad is right. | |
| There are these different buckets of undocumented immigrants. | |
| You have your criminal aliens, the ones convicted of the serious crimes. | |
| That's easy. | |
| ICE has always prioritized them. | |
| I think the agency does a great job of getting those ones out of prisons and jails. | |
| But then you get the individuals with low-level misdemeanor convictions. | |
| And again, this is where I think the public consensus, it gets really tough. | |
| And I can say that just from experience, that when we had those cases during my time and during the Obama administration, we were heavily criticized in many cases from both the left and in some cases from even the right about why are you seeking the deportation of these individuals. | |
| But getting back to what Congress can do about it, if you ask me, I think the most important thing that they can do is ensure that the department publishes timely data on who is being arrested. | |
| We do hear this in these individual cases. | |
| The administration likes to highlight them a lot, the worst of the worst. | |
| And there are some very good cases out there, individuals with serious violent felony offenses, sex offenses, things of that nature. | |
| But what we really need to see is this big picture, because when we see cases like the five-year-old child arrested in Minneapolis, whose father was in the immigration court proceedings, it's creating doubts. | |
| And I think that more than anything, if Congress wants to make a difference here, it would be publishing real-time data on who's being arrested, what is their criminal history, what is their immigration history, so the public can judge whether the scenes they're seeing in Minneapolis are really worth it. | |
| Is the law enforcement value we're getting out of this, is this necessary or is it, you know, is it just, does it justify what we're seeing on the streets of Minneapolis? | |
| Chad, do you think that there are some things that Democrats and Republicans could agree on? | |
| Could Republicans be on board with some of those demands? | |
| What are you hearing? | |
| Perhaps. | |
| So let me make a larger point, then I'll answer that. | |
| When I listen to the left a lot talk about immigration and what ICE should and should not be doing, it's almost as though they're wishing they had an immigration system that actually doesn't exist in law. | |
| What do you mean by that? | |
| Well, they say, well, you shouldn't be deporting anyone that's been here maybe five years or 10 years and hasn't gotten arrested. | |
| Again, if they have a final order of removal, that's not the law. | |
| So it's almost as though they wish they had a different system than they have today. | |
| And my answer to that is just go legislate, change the law, and it'll give ICE a different mission and they'll go out and they'll execute that mission. | |
| But they're obviously not doing that. | |
| As we look at Congress and what they want to do, look, I think you can get on board with a couple of different things. | |
| One is body cameras. | |
| I think the president has said it's a good idea. | |
| I know Secretary Noam has announced body cameras for those in Minneapolis at the moment. | |
| ICE has historically used them, not across all of their agents. | |
| I think now is the time to probably do that. | |
| The vast majority of local, state, and federal law enforcement do use body cameras. | |
| So now it becomes a funding issue and how do you roll that out? | |
| So I think that's something they could do. | |
| When you talk about masks, John brought it up, mask, very, very difficult. | |
| I ran into this issue in Portland in 2020 where we had a courthouse under siege where I had to surge in federal law enforcement. | |
| Similar, but a little different than what they're doing in Minneapolis. | |
| They wore masks because they were getting doxxed every single night. | |
| And so what we did is we put a unique identifier on their uniform, right? | |
| Because why do you want to see someone's face is you want to hold them accountable. | |
| If you think that you're a protester and you were targeted and the officer perhaps did something wrong, and how do you do an investigation on someone? | |
| We gave them a unique identifier so you could write down one, two, three, four, five, I think that officer did something wrong and you could go back and investigate. | |
| So I think there are things that can be done while still protecting the officer's safety if they need to cover their face because you will have people that will take pictures and they will find out who these individuals are and they go after their family. | |
| They go after the officer. | |
| They leave death threats. | |
| And first and foremost, we should be protecting our law enforcement officers. | |
| And then the last point, which I know they're talking a lot about, so it's body cameras, it's face masks, sorry, is judicial warrants. | |
| And I think that's probably a bridge way too far. | |
| If you're going to mandate that ICE has to use a judicial warrant in every case, which some are talking about, I think that that is, you're basically saying, ICE, you can't do your job. | |
| So I don't think that that is one that Republicans should entertain. | |
| There's also the roving patrols that Democrats want to look at. | |
| Again, I would say ICE does the majority targeted operations. | |
| They are going in looking for a very specific target and oftentimes a criminal target. | |
| Now, there's also what we consider collateral damage, right? | |
| So, if they pull over an individual that is that target, they're going to see who the other four people in that vehicle are as well, trying to understand who they are. | |
| Do they have arrest warrants? | |
| Are they wanted and the like? | |
| So, there are other things that can happen there. | |
| So, again, my experience tells me that the majority of ICE's operations are very targeted when they go into these cities. | |
| John, immigration is a tricky issue for Democrats. | |
| Historically, it's been beneficial for Republicans to talk about immigration issues. | |
| Now, Democrats are trying to lead the charge on some of these reforms. | |
| But would you encourage or caution Democrats when it comes to how much they push for some of these changes? | |
| You know, Dasha, it's hard to say. | |
| I mean, fundamentally, I'm a policy guy more than a politics guy. | |
| You know, immigration is such a tricky issue. | |
| In my experience, that in the abstract, when people hear about immigration, what Chad is saying resonates. | |
| And listen, I got to say, Dasha, quickly, I'm in agreement with Chad. | |
| I have a lot of sympathy for ICE because they're in such a difficult spot where they're asked to enforce these laws that there is tremendous public divide on. | |
| And whenever I hear people talk about let's abolish ICE, I mean, my gosh, before you could talk about abolishing ICE, why don't we change the immigration laws? | |
| I think there is a large part of the population that technically is out violating the law today, where there would be wide consensus that, hey, come forward, pay a small fine, go through a background check, and you can stay in this country, whether you get a path to citizenship or not. | |
| I suspect that Chad and I could sit together and craft out a bill we both would agree on probably in 15, 20 minutes, Chad, at least the broad contours of it. | |
| That's the goal of this show. | |
| Maybe you guys should go advise Congress on this. | |
| I mean, it is remarkable, though, on an issue that is so divisive around the country, to people who have actually done the work on this on different sides of the aisle finding a lot of common ground here. | |
| Dash, I worked with Tom Holman. | |
|
Tom's Role in Border Patrol
00:15:15
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| I mean, I don't think Tom and I are that far apart on some of these things. | |
| Where I would disagree with Chad is: okay, I hear you on final order fugitives or final order individuals who didn't leave the country. | |
| But then you look at these individual cases and they have three children, they're the sole breadwinner. | |
| It gets a lot harder when you start looking at it in practice. | |
| I'd much rather have the agents still go out there and do what they can to get those really bad guys off the streets because I still think there's room to focus more on that population and dial back our attention on some of these asylum seekers or people with no nexus to the criminal justice system. | |
| I guess what I would say, though, going back to your question quickly about the Democrats, is I worry that we're going to adopt a few reforms that'll change things. | |
| I think if you got, I do think there's been a shift of more roving patrols, usually primarily these border patrol agents. | |
| Part of that is tied to these needs for quotas. | |
| This is what I was saying at the beginning. | |
| I do think I'd rather focus on transparency and let the public judge it. | |
| I just think it's too hard in these limited moments Congress has to say, we passed three changes, you know, judicial warrants and masks. | |
| We solved the problem. | |
| It's not going to solve what is driving, frustrating them, which is this mass deportation effort focused on populations where don't have that clear criminal history. | |
| The transparency will at least let there be public awareness as to what is going on. | |
| Let the public have, you know, attempt to shape, you know, vote how they want to vote if that, you know, if they don't like what they're seeing. | |
| Yeah, here's what I would say is: I am in agreement. | |
| They should prioritize the worst of the worst, as we say, right? | |
| The hardened criminals that are out there. | |
| But here's what you can't do. | |
| And Tom Homans talked about this as well, which is you can't exempt whole classes of individuals from immigration law, right? | |
| We saw President Biden do this, and we saw a historic border crisis. | |
| We saw DHS under President Biden say that simply crossing the border illegally is not grounds for removal. | |
| Well, guess what that did? | |
| That sent a message to everyone that wanted to cross, as long as you weren't wanted in your home country and as long as you didn't do anything here, that you could come across that border illegally and you weren't going to be deported. | |
| I think that sends a terrible message. | |
| No one should be exempt from the law. | |
| You've got to prioritize, which I would agree with, but there will be other arrests. | |
| There will be other removals, folks that have been here for a period of time until Congress, and it's only Congress's job to do this, until Congress says, okay, we're going to pass a law, you've been here for 10 years, 20, whatever they decide, you got no criminal record, you're now shielded from deportation. | |
| But until that happens, ICE has a mission that it needs to execute on. | |
| Let's talk about the developments in Minneapolis that sort of broke open this whole conversation. | |
| Chad, you called sending Tom Homan in to head up operations there a stroke of genius. | |
| Why? | |
| Do you think this is a correction by the White House? | |
| Well, I mean, Tom's got a unique set of skills and background, right? | |
| 40-year veteran of not only customs and border protection, but also ICE as well. | |
| And so he's able to talk to local officials, to sheriffs, to other law enforcements in a different way than perhaps the secretary could or others could. | |
| He's been in their shoes. | |
| He's done this job. | |
| But probably most importantly, he hadn't been in Minneapolis. | |
| He hadn't been part of the operation for, you know, since it started. | |
| And so he comes at that particular problem with a new set of eyes and a new vantage point. | |
| Do you think there was mismanagement and a lack of expertise prior to Homan coming in? | |
| No, I wouldn't say it was a mismanagement. | |
| I would just say that, again, you're operating in a sanctuary city. | |
| So I think it's important to keep in mind that ICE today is doing operations probably in all 50 states. | |
| And in almost all of those, you don't hear anything about them. | |
| You don't see the chaos. | |
| It's only in sanctuary cities, for the most part, do you see this because you have policies and you have leadership there that is working against ICE in real time. | |
| And so they have a very specific challenge when they go into a place like Minneapolis and you hear people, such as the governor, say, we are at war with ICE. | |
| What do you think that does? | |
| That sends a message to the agitators, the violent opportunists, and others to get in the middle of ICE, to make a scene, to make a commotion, like to really instigate here. | |
| And I think that is unique to Minneapolis and these sanctuary cities. | |
| And so I think DHS, to answer your question, had a real challenge as they went in there. | |
| But I think the president sending Tom Homan in there said, I want to see a different course of action. | |
| I don't think he liked what he was seeing over a period of time. | |
| And that's why he sent Tom in. | |
| John, what do you make of what Chad is saying about sanctuary cities and ICE operating in those areas? | |
| What was your experience of that under Obama? | |
| And what do you make of what Chad's arguing here? | |
| Yeah, quickly, Dasha, just two things. | |
| One, first of all, I think Minneapolis was a comedy affairs that was predictable and inevitable. | |
| I think the first and primary issue there was putting a Border Patrol agent in charge of operations in the region. | |
| And the problem, and bringing up thousands of Border Patrol agents to supplement and surge, right, provide a surge capacity for ICE. | |
| The problem is the Border Patrol agents, look, I'm very defensive of all the agents here. | |
| I think they've been put in a very tough position. | |
| But the Border Patrol agents are trained to operate in a completely different environment with different legal requirements, different constitutional requirements. | |
| And certainly they're, you know, working between the ports of entry and the Arizona desert in the dead of night, when you come across a group and you don't know if these are drug mules who might be armed to the teeth or just economic migrants, you need To operate, you have to operate with a high sense of aggression. | |
| You can't do as much of the de-escalation techniques. | |
| It is just a high-threat environment where you have that culture of, you know, like I said, extreme aggression, so to speak. | |
| Now, you import that up into a city like Minneapolis. | |
| And we saw that speech Greg Bovino gave to the agents in Los Angeles, right? | |
| We're going to, if they tell, you know, we're going to arrest as many as they are, this is our city, right? | |
| This is us versus them. | |
| And those kind of confrontations were inevitable. | |
| And I really think what Tom Holman said, and I, but I agree with Chad, sending Tom is a great move by the president because Tom understands that there's a way in which you can do law enforcement in a sanctuary city like Minneapolis that doesn't result in these incredibly aggressive confrontations where you have, where you've both exposed your agents, and to be fair, assaults are up on the agents. | |
| There are bad actors and those protesters who are seeking this as an opportunity to do harm to these agents, but also a lot of people exercising their constitutional rights who are having heavy force being applied against them. | |
| And in some cases, as courts have found, excessive force or in violation of the Constitution. | |
| I think what you saw with Tom coming in is, candidly, maybe it's just my interpretation of what he's saying. | |
| But having known him, I think you saw him saying, I heard him say targeted and prioritized numerous times in that press conference. | |
| And so what I would say, Dasha, is that Sanctuary City, what is true is that in a sanctuary city where they do not give ICE access to the jail or they limit that access, it does force ICE officers, more officers to go out in the streets because they need to arrest these individuals at their home. | |
| And some individual might have a serious criminal history. | |
| And some sanctuary cities like Cook County can have very aggressive policies where you could have someone with a violent criminal history and they will not give ICE access to that individual in the jail. | |
| And ICE is going to go out in the street to make that apprehension at the person's home at some later date. | |
| When they do that, they do need to put more officers on the street for officer safety reasons. | |
| All of that is true. | |
| But I guess what I would disagree with is it doesn't mean you have to surge a thousand Border Patrol agents there to have these aggressive confrontations with protesters. | |
| And as Chad said, across America today, whether it's in San Francisco or countless other sanctuary jurisdictions, let's just say Boston, you see ICE agents are out there making arrests without those scenes we were seeing on TV every day, without the chaos, because they're doing it at a targeted manner, prioritizing the worst of the worst, where it's much more surgical operation, get in, get the target, get out, rather than these kind of aggressive approaches to make sure your presence was felt in the city and that you're aggressively IDing people. | |
| So I think it's about how this is done. | |
| And again, why I like Tom is because Tom knows how to enforce the law in a sanctuary jurisdiction without creating chaos. | |
| So John got us there a little bit, but Chad, what do you think are lessons learned out of Minneapolis that can and should be applied to other cities? | |
| Well, it depends on the agreement that Tom comes up with with the local officials there. | |
| I mean, it could serve as a model for other sanctuary cities, right? | |
| If there is access to jails, we hear a lot about how the Minnesota state prison, they have access there. | |
| Well, that's fine and dandy, but the majority of their targets are not in a state penitentiary. | |
| They're in a county jail or a local jail. | |
| And so ICE really needs access to that. | |
| I think what it tells you big picture is that if you want, if you don't want chaos and you want safe interactions with ICE or you believe that you want safe interactions with ICE, then cooperation with ICE at that local level takes that out of the public view. | |
| It puts it in a jail setting and they're able to do their job very efficiently and effectively. | |
| But if you want chaos, which is the ironic part about sanctuary cities, right? | |
| You have mayor saying, well, we don't want ICE in our community and we protect our neighbors. | |
| But if you have those policies and you release these people out in the street, you're actually inviting more and more officers into your community because what took two officers to go in a jail setting and pick up one or two targets now takes 20 officers to go into a neighborhood and pick up those same two targets. | |
| So I think it's about cooperating and it's about talking, lessons learned. | |
| I think it's trying to come to an agreement with these sanctuary city politicians and leaders in these communities to say, ICE has a job to do. | |
| They are going to do their job. | |
| And let's try to do it in the most effective and cooperative way as possible. | |
| But at the end of the day, we're not, you know, ICE can't just fold up their tent and go home and not do their job. | |
| They're going to effectuate immigration authority, immigration arrest in every city across the country. | |
| Yeah, John, I'm curious what your advice would be to Democratic leaders in blue states and cities and in sanctuary cities in particular to how to avoid something like what happened in Minneapolis coming to their area. | |
| Josh, listen, I just reject the proposition that Minneapolis was a byproduct of the sanctuary city. | |
| Sanctuary cities are problematic. | |
| Sanctuary cities create, in many cases, in some cases, I do think they create public safety risks. | |
| Not all sanctuary cities are equal. | |
| Some of them say, we're going to draw the line. | |
| If you have a serious or violent criminal history, we'll let ICE have access to the jail to take you into custody in the jail. | |
| Some sanctuary cities go beyond, you know, go beyond that and say nobody can have access to the jail. | |
| I certainly agree that that is a challenge for ICE. | |
| I think those more extreme sanctuary cities that release violent offenders who have no immigration status in the United States, I think that's absurd, right? | |
| That just violates common sense and jeopardizes public safety. | |
| But this idea that the only way to address a sanctuary city is to surge a thousand Border Patrol agents in there and tell them outside of their training. | |
| And Josh, understand, please, that Border Patrol agents and ICE agents just don't are not trained to deal with these First Amendment people exercising their First Amendment rights and protesters and say we're going to aggressively confront them. | |
| And as Greg Bavino said, we're going to bring in truckloads of less than lethal pepper balls and tear gas to really, we're going to confront these guys. | |
| That is not a necessary byproduct of a sanctuary city. | |
| And what I was saying earlier is that sanctuary cities started in the Obama administration as a rejection of our focus on prisons and jails. | |
| And advocates who were frustrated that we thought that was the right approach pivoted to state and localities and put pressure on them to limit the ICE access to those jails. | |
| But for over, what, 14 years now, ICE has been enforcing the law, getting those bad guys off the streets in sanctuary cities. | |
| Ideally, the agents could do it in a more safe, secure environment, but they know how to do it in a way that is less disruptive. | |
| Minneapolis was not a byproduct of sanctuary city. | |
| It was a byproduct of a policy decision to surge a thousand Border Patrol agents in there and task them with aggressively confronting protesters. | |
| The good news, though, is I heard Tom say all the right things in this press conference, back to a targeted approach with a priority on those bad guys. | |
| I'm optimistic that he's going to demonstrate that you can have immigration enforcement without having chaos in a sanctuary jurisdiction. | |
| Yeah, I mean, here's what I would just say on that last point, which is when you have ICE officers in a locality like Minneapolis and they come under attack because you don't have local law enforcement, I do agree. | |
| Local law enforcement says it's better to do that riot control, the crowd control, and let ICE focus on their mission, which is a targeted criminal operation to grab an individual and remove them. | |
| But if local police isn't going to do that, well, then you have to surge resources in. | |
| And you don't surge 50 or 60. | |
| You surge an overwhelming force. | |
| That's just basic tactics to make sure that those ICE officers remain safe because you don't know how it's going to escalate. | |
| You don't know that, okay, they're going to stop targeting ICE officers. | |
| Now they're going to target the federal facility. | |
| Now they're going to do something else and something else and something else. | |
| So what you really need is that, again, I keep coming back to it, is that cooperation with local law enforcement. | |
| Because if you have to shut down a street because ICE is doing an operation, it's much better to have a local police car out there with a local badge and a local uniform. | |
| The residents know who that is. | |
| They don't know who ICE is. | |
| They don't see them on an everyday basis. | |
| I know you disagree with the surge piece of this. | |
| I wonder how you think about whether there should be better coordination between local and federal enforcement. | |
| Oh, absolutely. | |
| Listen, law enforcement works best when it works together. | |
| And, Dasha, one of the secrets of these sanctuary jurisdictions is at the career police department level, there's actually a law enforcement, the law enforcement, federal and the state and local. | |
| There's more cooperation that goes on than people realize. | |
| I mean, these guys are out there cooperating on criminal investigations focused on MS-13 and serious criminal street gangs. | |
| There's even in the sanctuary jails where the sheriffs might be restricted by a county ordinance of giving access to ICE. | |
| Typically, if there's a really bad offender, there will be a call made to ICE to say, hey, he's being released tomorrow at 9 a.m. | |
| You know, you might want to have a couple of agents waiting outside the door. | |
| I think that we would find that there's shared values amongst law enforcement, which is they all want to see their communities safer. | |
| I think, unfortunately, a lot of what happened in Minneapolis as well is when the politics infused in that and people start taking hard lines. | |
| But absolutely, I think we're all better off when there's cooperation. | |
| I am just a little bit more, I think, sympathetic than Chad is to this idea when a state police chief says, hey, if we're seen providing that backup to the ICE agents in our immigrant communities, right, they see us as cooperating in part of that, as part of that immigration enforcement effort, which we're worried is going to chill cooperation. | |
| I just think you have to respect that when it's coming from a police chief who says, we think this could have a negative impact on our ability to keep our communities safe. | |
| I agree with Chad. | |
| What happened by the end of that, Dasha, in Minneapolis, it was crazy. | |
| I mean, ICE agents going out there and groups following them and whistles blowing everywhere. | |
| You can't do any enforcement in an environment like that. | |
| Yeah, given the heated climate, though, would both of you potentially agree that more training might be needed for these agents, whether it's in Border Patrol or ICE, that are coming into these environments in a moment that is so heated. | |
| John? | |
| It can't hurt, certainly. | |
| I mean, listen, I think it's critically important. | |
| It's not traditionally been what ICE has done. | |
|
Iranian Nuclear Concerns
00:16:11
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|
| It's not traditionally, when Chad was running DHS, when I was at ICE, you just didn't see these, they just didn't have to deal with these protesters. | |
| It might be a new reality, Dasha. | |
| Certainly something I think requires a lot of training and I would like to see the training on. | |
| But of course, we're concerned because it appears that DHS is shortening the training overall in an effort to get more officers on the street quickly. | |
| But I think it would make a difference, yes. | |
| Chad? | |
| Yeah, I mean, I feel like this is a little bit of a throwaway, which is we don't train local police to do border patrol operations, right? | |
| And so, yes, you can always train more and more and more. | |
| ICE goes to Fletsey, our Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. | |
| Border Patrol has their own academy. | |
| They both have specialized units, SRT and others, that actually do some of this. | |
| ICE works in an urban environment, but again, they are really good at their targeted operations where you see local police help in 98% of jurisdictions around the country. | |
| So this really isn't an issue. | |
| I think this is what's so frustrating to me: obviously, we had a very chaotic situation unfold in Minneapolis, but we're trying to expand that to across the country that there's some huge problem with ICE that takes reforms by Congress, quote, reforms, which I call limitations, to ICE. | |
| This isn't an issue in Texas. | |
| This isn't an issue in Florida. | |
| It's not an issue in 98 other jurisdictions because you have that close cooperation. | |
| Because not all, but most of these interactions take place in a jail setting. | |
| And so I think you have sanctuary cities that try to put roadblocks up for ICE. | |
| And then when something happens, you now have elected officials saying, I need to limit ICE's authority even more. | |
| I need to ratchet them back even more, even though in 98% of the jurisdictions goes off without a hitch. | |
| All right, gentlemen, that is all the time we have. | |
| But thank you so much for bringing your expertise. | |
| Former Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and former Acting ICE Director John Sandwig. | |
| Thank you both so much for joining me today. | |
| Thank you. | |
| My pleasure. | |
| All right, let's turn now to this week's C-SPAN Flashback, where we dig deep into the video archives to show you a moment in political history that's reminiscent of what's happening today. | |
| The year was 1986. | |
| Then Republican Vice President George H.W. Bush discussing the Reagan administration's policy toward Iran and potential regime change. | |
| Take a list. | |
| We may not like the current Iranian regime, and I've said we don't. | |
| But it would be irresponsible to ignore its geopolitical and strategic importance. | |
| And that doesn't mean we should simply appease any Iranian regime. | |
| It does mean, however, that we can't ignore this looming transition that will soon take place in Iran. | |
| Khomeini will pass from the scene. | |
| A successor regime will take power. | |
| And we must be positioned to serve America's interests and indeed the interests of the entire free world. | |
| Flash forward to today, and the U.S. continues to use strong language about Iran's nuclear program, even as diplomatic channels remain open and talks continue. | |
| And we've got two political pros from both sides of the aisle to discuss U.S. tensions with Iran and other foreign policy headlines. | |
| Michael Allen, he has worked for the House Intelligence Committee as well as the National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration. | |
| And Daniel Baer, it's U.S. ambassador to the Organization for the Security and Cooperation in Europe during the Obama administration. | |
| Thank you both so much for joining me here today. | |
| There is so much to talk about on the foreign policy front in this administration, which just continues to baffle me. | |
| But seeing that clip from Bush on Iran, I mean, does that bring back some memories? | |
| It does. | |
| It's a reminder that Iran has been on our radar screen for many decades, especially since it flipped to the current regime in 1979. | |
| You can tell that back then, George H.W. Bush is trying to rally support for probably sanctions or international isolation of the Iranian regime. | |
| And here we are so many years later with even bigger problems with them as we try to cope with might be the vestiges of the nuclear program, their support of terrorism around the world, and of course our growing concern about their ballistic missiles. | |
| So they're a big issue for this country for a long time. | |
| Yeah, Dan, looking back to that and thinking about this moment here, where's your head at? | |
| I guess I'm struck by the fact that we've had 40 years to prepare for what George Bush was talking about the day after. | |
| And it's kind of interesting how much we've been focused through Democratic and Republican administrations on kind of getting to that day after and how little time, despite having 40 years of preparation, how little we focused on what happens the day after. | |
| I mean, Khomeini is now 86 years old. | |
| The day after is not going to be 40 years from now. | |
| And we know that that's coming. | |
| And I think having a vision for what comes after is going to be really important when that happens. | |
| So the U.S. and Iran have been hinting at the possibility of reaching a nuclear deal. | |
| Here's Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth this week. | |
| Listen. | |
| The president's been clear from the beginning, as he was before Midnight Hammer. | |
| Iran will not have nuclear weapons capabilities. | |
| And so they can either negotiate on that front or we have other options. | |
| That's why the War Department exists. | |
| He doesn't want to go that route. | |
| I don't want to go that route. | |
| But our job is to be prepared. | |
| And so, of course, we are. | |
| And we are more than prepared. | |
| But President Trump's committed to peace. | |
| He's committed to a deal. | |
| If Iran's serious about making a deal, and we'll see. | |
| Dan, what do you make of the administration's approach here? | |
| I think we're kind of seeing the intersection of two pieces of policy right now. | |
| And I think that's made it hard to predict what's going to happen next. | |
| On the one hand, there's been the long-standing concern about the Iranian nuclear program. | |
| Obviously, the strikes last year did significant damage. | |
| I think there's disagreement perhaps about how significant, but there was significant damage done, and the Iranian nuclear program remains a concern. | |
| On the other hand, more recently, the protests that broke out on December 28th, the news that is coming out, obviously it's been under an internet blackout, but the news that's coming out that 30,000 people might have been slaughtered, which is just one of the largest mass slaughters by a government in the modern era. | |
| President Trump was vocal about saying that there would be consequences if people were killed, and the Iranians have kind of blown through that red line. | |
| So it's unclear to me kind of which policy is driving at any different moment. | |
| We are now positioned to take military action if the president decides to do so, but he has also kept the line open, as Secretary Hagseth was speaking about, about negotiation. | |
| So how those two kind of policy vectors come together in the question of whether there will be action or negotiation, I think that's the show that we're all watching day by day. | |
| Yeah, I mean, Michael, if you're sitting at the NSC or at state in this administration, what are you calculating for right now? | |
| Well, you're trying to give the president the maximum number of options. | |
| And I think you've probably received advice from the intelligence community and others that we may have missed our moment to directly help the Iranians who were out protesting against the regime on the streets. | |
| And what do you think that we didn't have the theater set with the right naval and air assets to get the job done? | |
| I think he got close to doing it. | |
| And maybe we could have hit a lot of targets. | |
| But I think the Israelis and others in the region said that at least the defensive part of this is not ready to go. | |
| We don't have enough interceptors. | |
| We don't have the FAAD missile battery in Israel. | |
| So I think that caused him to back off. | |
| And as he restocks the area for war, I think he's saying, let's see what I can get diplomatically out of the regime. | |
| I know I can't get reform of the regime, or they're not going to step down. | |
| They're not going to do anything directly that are going to benefit what the protesters were after. | |
| But I'll return to our traditional wish list of things that we need out of them. | |
| And that's where he's saying, I need a complete renunciation for enriching uranium, which is one of the things we're asking for. | |
| And of course, as I mentioned, they want to reduce the stockpiles of their ballistic missiles. | |
| That's what the Israelis really, really care about. | |
| And of course, there's their support for terrorism. | |
| So it is a bit of a mixed message. | |
| It was all about the protesters, and now we're going back to our long-standing request list. | |
| Yeah, and it looks like the U.S. and Iran aren't necessarily on the same page. | |
| Axios writes this. | |
| The Trump administration's long-standing demand that any deal cover Iran's nuclear program, missile program, and regional proxies is incompatible with the Iranian position that only the nuclear issue is on the table. | |
| So even when we're talking about these programs, let alone protesters and all this other stuff, it doesn't necessarily seem that everyone's aligned on what the demands even are. | |
| How do these two powers find middle ground here? | |
| I mean, I think it's really hard. | |
| I agree with Michael on the challenges from the U.S. position and evaluating the likely effects or impact of taking military action or what we can get out of diplomacy. | |
| On the other side of the equation, there's a regime that has kind of made its raison d'être domestically, one of complete and total resistance to the United States. | |
| My colleague Karim Sajapur writes about this in the Atlantic recently. | |
| And so for them, it's kind of existential to continue that posture of resistance. | |
| The United States will want not only a cessation of the nuclear program, but also, as Michael said, an agreement from Iran to basically refrain from the attacks on U.S. troops in the region and on allies cease its international terrorism and particularly its attacks in the region. | |
| It's unclear whether the regime can do that, especially because it is weaker than it has been in a very long time, and it will need to demonstrate that it is not folding in some way in order to justify its continued existence. | |
| So they're in a tough negotiation spot as well. | |
| Yeah, Michael, to your point, take a look at this headline. | |
| Before any strike on Iran, the U.S. needs to bolster air defenses in the Mideast. | |
| I mean, given the likelihood that Iran would retaliate in some way, how likely is it that Trump conducts airstrikes, or is that just a negotiating tactic? | |
| So I think that he's going to use airstrikes regardless. | |
| I really don't think the Iranians are going to be able, you know, sort of constitutionally, to be able to give up what we want them to give up. | |
| And so I think the president has already staked United States strategic capability on the idea that we're going to strike the Iranian regime when he said we're locked and loaded and arguably encouraged, coaxed more Iranians to come out and hit the streets. | |
| So I think he's doing it as a matter of policy, but also a matter of politics. | |
| I don't think the president, when he criticizes Barack Obama for not helping the green movement in 2009 or at least speaking out on their behalf, when he criticizes the president for President Obama for not living up to his own red line in Syria when Assad used chemical weapons and he said, I'd hit you and then he ended up not doing it. | |
| I think the president, Trump, knows that these are big issues for him. | |
| He's all about strength and credibility. | |
| So I think it's a foregone conclusion that we're going to strike them somehow unless they met our incredible maximalist demands, which I don't think they're able to. | |
| Dan, what do you think about that? | |
| And do you think it's an effective strategy? | |
| I mean, I think certainly setting the theater as he has done over recent weeks prepares and makes it a more credible threat that can be helpful and conducive to negotiations. | |
| It's not an empty threat. | |
| It is true that allies and the U.S. allies and partners in the region are concerned about repercussions and Iranian counteraction. | |
| So setting the theater has been an important way of both preparing to take a strike if he wants to and preparing for the negotiations to be as serious as possible with a credible threat behind them. | |
| I guess I'm also it's hard to make a prediction today, but I think I would lean more toward that it's more likely that there ends up being some sort of action, military action taken than not. | |
| But obviously there could be a breakthrough at the diplomatic talks. | |
| And I guess for my part, I hope that there is. | |
| As I said, I think the question is not when, is not if this regime is going to leave the scene, it's when. | |
| And its days are numbered. | |
| I think it is more predictable and manageable from a U.S. interest standpoint and from the interests of our partners in the region if we're able to get what we want strategically at the negotiating table rather than through military action. | |
| Let's take a jet over to the Western Hemisphere and talk about Venezuela because this week marks one month since the capture of Nicolas Maduro and his wife. | |
| Who is going to determine the future of Venezuela? | |
| Well, I think in the very short term, it's the United States. | |
| We decided to keep most of the regime intact. | |
| I think we had in mind our own experience in Iraq when we did depathification and got rid of the entire military and it led to an incredibly unstable situation that we paid for with blood and treasure. | |
| This time, we just took off the head of the snake. | |
| The rest of the regime is still there, and we're going to try to use our leverage over them, military leverage and oil leverage, to do the right thing or to act in the way that the United States would like them to act while we try to take some of the money from oil proceeds and reroute it to the people. | |
| But this is only a short-term sort of solution. | |
| I think over time, they're going to have to find a way to either have new elections or take Maria Machado, who was elected last year and won the Nobel Peace Prize, to get her back in office at some point, but not now. | |
| I think for now, we have to get stability, try and make some progress in this particular country before we try to turn self-governance back over to them completely. | |
| Yeah, Dan, what should the medium to long term look like then when he's talking about Maria Credo Machado and sort of pushing out the Maduro regime and getting a different set of powers in there? | |
| What should that timeline look like? | |
| I mean, it's very hard to say. | |
| And I think the honest answer is that it's not clear that anybody has a plan for how to get from that short term to that medium to long term. | |
| I think we would all agree that the Venezuelan people deserve to have a democratically elected leader. | |
| They deserve to have a government that's not corrupt and that doesn't trample their human rights. | |
| Obviously, Maduro was a monster, and it's no love loss for Maduro. | |
| And Delcy Rodriguez has taken over and was Maduro's vice president. | |
| And we should remember that the rest of that regime, as Michael said, is still in place. | |
| And we can try to manage in the short to medium term the kind of payments and seizing the oil revenues. | |
| And then the latest I've seen is that we're going to kind of ask the regime for receipts and then we'll reimburse them for things that they're supposed to be doing from supporting social welfare and stuff. | |
| So far, I don't think the Venezuelan people have seen much in terms of the changes in their daily lives. | |
| And as Michael said, over the long term, people are going to demand that change again. | |
| They may give a little bit of a pause to see how things pan out. | |
| But if the rest of the regime is unable to deliver on what people want, there's going to be impatience with that. | |
| And that impatience will be directed not just at the regime, but at the United States. | |
| So we have to be careful about our long-term interests in the region. | |
| Michael, one of the administration's arguments for going into Venezuela and for this focus on the Western hemisphere is to neutralize powers that are adversaries like Russia, like China, and Iran. | |
| Do you think that the U.S. has done that effectively in Venezuela? | |
| I think we're on the way to doing it. | |
|
Ukraine's Long-Term Strategy
00:08:09
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|
| Just the fact that we're there and presumably able to dictate at least big things, like cut the Chinese out, cut the Russians out. | |
| I think that's one of the areas where we can succeed. | |
| I don't know how much success we will have in the medium to long term on trying to completely separate cartel influence out from Venezuela when you think of everyone from the military to the collectivos, which are essentially these squads of gang members. | |
| I think it's hard over time also to gauge how much success in terms of migration outflow there is, which is another thing President Trump is worried about. | |
| So there's a lot of things that are really hard to do, even if you've got some power over the Venezuelans. | |
| But I think it's achievable when we say to them, you better not let the Chinese in here in any big way. | |
| And by the way, I think we've already cut off the oil that is being sent to the teapot refineries in China. | |
| So that's one thing that's occurred so far. | |
| All right. | |
| Back in the jet and over to another continent. | |
| Let's talk Russia and Ukraine. | |
| There have been trilateral talks with the U.S., but there's still a ton to be ironed out. | |
| I mean, this conflict has really, it seems like, confounded the administration. | |
| Here is a quote from the New York Times saying the three sides have yet to agree on what should happen to the Ukrainian-controlled territory in the eastern Donetsk region of Ukraine or what security guarantees the country should get to protect it from future attacks. | |
| Dan, where is this headed and just how sort of intractable are those final bits of conflict for a resolution? | |
| I don't like to be cynical. | |
| I care a lot about Ukraine. | |
| I spent a lot of time after the first invasion going back and forth between Vienna and Ukraine, including the Donbass. | |
| The challenge at this point is not around a negotiating table. | |
| The challenge at this point is a political problem, which is Vladimir Putin is not ready for peace and does not want an end to this conflict. | |
| He has not achieved his ambitions, and he has actually retooled his entire economy and therefore his regime around the continuation of this war. | |
| And so I think he's playing the Trump administration for time right now, and he's happy to do that, and he's happy to say that he'll go to more meetings or have people go to more meetings. | |
| But there is no sincere, I see no evidence that there's a sincere desire for peace from the Russian side. | |
| And until there is, it will be moving commas, arguing about paragraphs, et cetera, ad infinitum. | |
| The Ukrainians, on the other hand, have been, on the other hand, have been ready, obviously, for peace from before the invasion began. | |
| I think they are sincerely trying to find a way to make it work, but they have to do two things. | |
| One is to put down things that they can live with and be an independent sovereign nation with, and also demonstrate good faith to the Trump administration that seems to still believe that there's a chance that Putin wants peace. | |
| And I think that's a mistaken assessment. | |
| Michael, what do you think? | |
| Is the Trump administration getting played here? | |
| Well, I don't know that they're getting played yet, but I absolutely agree that Putin is not ready for peace yet. | |
| He needs to be conditioned to make real concessions. | |
| And the way you really condition him, I think, would be for the United States to ramp up our sanctions tremendously. | |
| Second, it'd be nice if we were still in the game of transferring our own weapons to them, but at least the Europeans are buying our weapons and shipping them to the Ukrainians. | |
| But there's a category of weapons, which are long-range precision strike, that we ought to sell to the Ukrainians because they were having a tremendous amount of success knocking out Russian refineries. | |
| And when you knock out Russian refineries, you take down how much oil money they're able to take in, which is what fuels the war machine that Dan just mentioned. | |
| So we have to get serious about how are we pressuring the Russians. | |
| And I don't see the Trump administration excited to do that. | |
| I think what President Trump wants is an agreement. | |
| I don't know that he's totally wedded to any of the details of the agreement, but he looks at the two parties and he says to himself, who's easier to pressure? | |
| And I think he thinks it's got to be Ukraine, and therefore they should give up territory, but the Ukrainians can't give it up. | |
| This would harm the national security of their country. | |
| So I think that is where we are. | |
| I think that's the nub of the issue. | |
| Putin doesn't want to compromise. | |
| And if we want peace in the medium term, we need to get him to a place where he thinks, wow, this has gotten too expensive for me. | |
| Meanwhile, our NATO allies are watching how we're handling this. | |
| And obviously they're involved in those conversations. | |
| And there's been a ton of discussion about the future of these alliances amid the president's desire to own Greenland. | |
| Now, he's backed off of the military threat. | |
| He's backed off of the tariff threat. | |
| But I was in Davos, and it was the talk of the entire region. | |
| I mean, everybody was concerned about not just the Greenland issue, but what that signified. | |
| Take a listen to the Danish prime minister. | |
| Let me emphasize that in a situation where the world order as we have known it is under pressure, it's changing rapidly, maybe it's gone, then we need a stronger Europe than ever. | |
| And I think there are some lessons learned in the last couple of weeks for Europe. | |
| If we stand united, if we, of course, do not compromise on our democratic values and if we send a very clear signal, if somebody is threatening us from outside, we will stand up together and we will respond. | |
| Then we are able to find a way forward. | |
| Michael, has the U.S.-European relationship changed forever? | |
| It's changed substantially, and that was the president's objective at the beginning when he said you've really got to start carrying more of your own weight. | |
| And I think he scared them so much that they actually did all up their commitments on what they would spend for infrastructure, but more importantly, for military purposes. | |
| And that was a good thing. | |
| It was done a little bit too roughly for my taste, but I'm glad that the Europeans got there. | |
| But I think when they're finally stepping up to help Ukraine in a more concrete way and building their own defense industrial bases back, to try and beat them up over Greenland is a bridge too far. | |
| They're doing what we asked them to do. | |
| And it's one thing, I think, to justly criticize them for their economic policies and to look at how their economies have become sluggish and encourage them to be more innovative because we need them as a Western bloc against China and others. | |
| But it's quite another, I think, to just sort of say, we're going to come over here and steal some of your territory, get everybody all upset and riled up, even if the president was just trying to do it for that very purpose, which was to give attention and to negotiate something less than a full takeover, I think is counterproductive and we shouldn't be spending our time doing this. | |
| Dan, if this relationship were to shift, is there putting any toothpaste back in the tube? | |
| If the next person in power is a Democrat or a different kind of foreign policy Republican, can you claw things back? | |
| Somewhat. | |
| I mean, yes and no. | |
| The level of trust that we had basically since World War II and certainly since the fall of the wall and the end of the Cold War, I mean, I won't say never, but that is not a in our lifetimes, I think probably. | |
| Maybe yours, not mine, putting back in the tube. | |
| The structural reasons for the United States and Europe to cooperate remain. | |
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Bridging Political Differences
00:04:46
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| It is absolutely in the interest of every American that we have close relationships with the Europeans. | |
| It's absolutely in the interest of every European that they have a close relationship with the Americans. | |
| And so that will remain. | |
| And so that offers an opportunity to build something new in the wake. | |
| That is all the time we have, gentlemen. | |
| Thank you both so much. | |
| Michael Allen and Dan Baer. | |
| And let's close this week's program with our ceasefire moment of the week. | |
| A tech startup developed a unique way to bridge differences in American politics. | |
| The company called Matter Neuroscience attempting a social experiment to connect people from one of the most liberal cities with one of the most conservative. | |
| Here's how they did it. | |
| Bought this payphone on Facebook Marketplace and then modified it a bunch and then changed the signage to say call a Republican. | |
| Then we brought the payphone to San Francisco, California, which is the most liberal city in America. | |
| And after we installed the phone, we then got on a flight to Texas where we bought another payphone in Dallas and drove it two hours west to Abilene, the most conservative city in America. | |
| And then at an Airbnb, we modified it a bunch and had it say call a Democrat on it. | |
| And when you pick up this phone in Texas, it automatically calls the other phone in San Francisco. | |
| Project is called the Party Line, and the goal is to get people from different political viewpoints to have meaningful, not hateful conversations. | |
| So I am not a Democrat per se, but I am a resident of San Francisco. | |
| I kind of banded the Democratic Party. | |
| Oh, okay. | |
| Are you a Republican? | |
| I'm not necessarily a Republican, but I'm not really a Democrat either. | |
| I'm of like independent party. | |
| All right. | |
| I just feel like there's so many good points on both sides. | |
| It's really hard for me to make like a decision. | |
| We just gotta work on bridging, you know, our commonalities together. | |
| You know, we're all, you know, we're all probably working class, you know, so we gotta unite and just come together. | |
| And it's like politics. | |
| All they do is divide. | |
| And I think America could do better about that for sure. | |
| Yeah. | |
| The tech company has plans to relocate the San Francisco phone booth to other cities over time. | |
| That's it for this episode of Ceasefire. | |
| We're also available as a podcast. | |
| Find us in all the usual places. | |
| I'm Dasha Burns. | |
| And remember, whether or not you agree, keep talking and keep listening. | |
| Tonight, we'll bring you a recent town hall with Oregon Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley as he talks about his legislative priorities and takes questions from constituents, starting at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | |
| You can also watch on the C-SPAN Now video app or online at c-SPAN.org. | |
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | |
| We're funded by these television companies and more, including Comcast. | |
| The flag replacement program got started by a good friend of mine, a Navy vet, who saw a flag at the office that needed to be replaced and said, wouldn't this be great if this was going to be something that we did for anyone? | |
| Comcast has always been a community-driven company. | |
| This is one of those great examples of the way we're getting out there. | |
| Comcast supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. | |
| Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series. | |
| This Sunday with our guest, best-selling author Jody Pico, who has written 29 books about a wide range of controversial and moral issues. | |
| Her books include The Storyteller, 19 Minutes, and her latest by any other name. | |
| She joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein. | |
| People come to you and say you've changed their views on certain social issues because of your books. | |
| That's why I write. | |
| You know, it's to start a discussion. | |
| And you can't always have a discussion with people. | |
| Some people just aren't ready to hear it. | |
| But there are a lot of minds that you can change one mind at a time. | |
| Watch America's Book Club with Jodi Picoult this Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | |
| Sunday on C-SPAN's Q&A, the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum's Teasel Muir Harmony on the History of the U.S. Space Program. | |
|
The Journey to the Moon
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| From the creation of NASA in 1958 to Neil Armstrong taking his first historic steps on the lunar surface in July 1969 and NASA's plans to return astronauts to the moon. | |
| She also looks back on astronaut Frank Borman's Apollo 8 Christmas Eve broadcast in 1968. | |
| Frank Borman was told when he was preparing for this mission, and the schedule is short, he said, he was told, the broadcast will be on Christmas Eve and more humans will be listening to your voice than have ever listened to a human voice in history. | |
| Say something appropriate. | |
| Those are the instructions he got and he thought, you know, what should I say? | |
| In the beginning, God createth the heaven and the earth. | |
| The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum's Tieselmuir Harmony, Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. | |