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Epstein Files Hearing Dominates
00:15:13
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| During a shutdown with funds from the Republican tax and spending law, which was passed last summer. | |
| And on C-SPAN 3 at 9 a.m. Eastern, Minnesota's Democratic Attorney General Keith Ellison, the Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Todd Lyons, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott will testify to the Senate Homeland Security Committee regarding immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota. | |
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| Coming out this morning on Washington Journal, along with your calls and comments live, we'll talk about Friday's deadline on DHS funding, housing affordability, and the Epstein investigation. | |
| First with Nebraska Republican Congressman Mike Flood, and then with California Democratic Congressman Scott Peters. | |
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal is next. | |
| Join the conversation. | |
| This is The Washington Journal for February 12th. | |
| The House is in at 9 today, so a two-hour show. | |
| In her appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Pam Bondi spent most of the hearing defending the Justice Department's handling of the release of the Epstein files, pushing back against Democratic lawmakers and at least one Republican for the handling of those files. | |
| She also refused several attempts by Democrats to engage with survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's abuse who were in the hearing room. | |
| We'll show you portions of the hearing, and you can respond to the Attorney General's appearance yesterday on the following lines. | |
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | |
| Democrats, 202-748-8000. | |
| And Independents, 2027-8002. | |
| You can also text us your thoughts this morning at 202-748-8003 and post on our social media sites. | |
| That's facebook.com/slash C-SPAN. | |
| And on X, it's at C-SPANWJ. | |
| The hearing yesterday in front of the House Judiciary Committee was labeled as one that takes a look at general oversight, though the one topic that emerged from that hearing was that about the Epstein files. | |
| The Washington Times capturing a headline of many of the papers today. | |
| Bondi confirms active Epstein inquiries is the headline. | |
| But in the write-up of it, it says that when it comes to her appearance yesterday, the Attorney General defended her department's release of millions of pages of documents pertaining to Epstein, saying President Trump's signing of the legislation forcing disclosure makes him the most transparent president in history. | |
| Ms. Bondi said errors in redacting the names of potential Epstein conspirators and in failing to redact the names of victims were minimal, given the volume of information and the 30-day deadline set by the law. | |
| In fact, it took about twice that time to release the 3 million files published so far, adding, we did the best we could. | |
| That's the write-up from yesterday. | |
| You can still see this hearing, by the way, on our app at C-SPAN Now and our website at c-span.org. | |
| From her opening testimony yesterday, here is the Attorney General Pam Bondi on the Epstein files. | |
| To address the Epstein files, more than 500 attorneys and reviewers spent thousands of hours painstakingly reviewing millions of pages to comply with Congress's law. | |
| We've released more than 3 million pages, including 180,000 images, all to the public, while doing our very best in the timeframe allotted by the legislation to protect victims. | |
| And if you brought us a victim's name that was inadvertently released, we immediately redacted it. | |
| All members of Congress, as you know, are invited to visit DOJ to see for yourselves. | |
| I want to take a moment to acknowledge the Epstein survivors who are here today. | |
| I'm a career prosecutor, and despite what the ranking member said, I have spent my entire career fighting for victims, and I will continue to do so. | |
| I am deeply sorry for what any victim, any victim has been through, especially as a result of that monster. | |
| If you have any information to share with law enforcement about anyone who has hurt you or abused you, the FBI is waiting to hear from you. | |
| I want you to know that any accusations of criminal wrongdoing will be taken seriously and investigated. | |
| The Department of Justice is committed to holding criminals accountable to the fullest extent of the law. | |
| Again, that was from yesterday, that full hearing available to you on our several platforms, 202748-8001 for Republicans, 202748-8000 for Democrats and Independents, 2027, 80002. | |
| If you want to comment on the Attorney General's appearance yesterday talking about the Epstein files, the Wall Street Journal adds, when it comes to yesterday, saying her appearance Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee got off to a tense start when Democrats blasted the department's redactions of material and the release of Epstein files, which revealed photos and intimate details about numerous victims while keeping some of the prominent names secret. | |
| That's from the Wall Street Journal. | |
| It was an exchange yesterday with Washington State Democrat Pramila Jayapaul, directly referencing victims who were in the audience during the exchange. | |
| And here's a bit of that. | |
| Will you turn to the survivors? | |
| This is not about anybody that came before you. | |
| It is about you taking responsibility for your Department of Justice and the harm that it has done to the survivors who are standing right behind you and are waiting for you to turn to them and apologize for what your Department of Justice has done. | |
| Members get to ask the questions. | |
| The witness gets to answer in the way they want to answer the Attorney General. | |
| That's not accurate, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Because she doesn't like the answer. | |
| So, Mr. Chairman, she asked Merrick Garland this. | |
| I am reclaiming my time. | |
| I will claim my time is to be able to do it. | |
| I'm not going to get in the gutter for her theatrics. | |
| The time belongs to the gentlelady. | |
| The gentlelady has 17 seconds. | |
| Thank you. | |
| You're not going to answer this question, so let me just. | |
| No, I'm answering a question. | |
| The witnesses interrupted. | |
| I'm going to let me have my gentlelady. | |
| The gentlelady from Washington controls the time. | |
| The gentlelady has 17 seconds. | |
| You can proceed with your final 17 seconds. | |
| What a massive cover-up this has been and continues to be. | |
| Donald Trump made the release of the Epstein files the center of his political campaign because he thought it would benefit him. | |
| Then you got into office, Attorney General, claimed to have a client list on the firm say that there was no list. | |
| Your deputy, Todd Blanch, met alone. | |
| minimum security prison and now you continue the cover-up and I wish that you would turn around to the survivors who are standing right behind you and on a human level. | |
| Chairman, the chair now recognizes the chair. | |
| And what you have done again, that was from yesterday. | |
| Let's hear from Gail in North Carolina. | |
| Democrats, the Attorney General, Pamela Bondi, appearing before Congress talking about the Epstein files. | |
| Gail in North Carolina, go ahead. | |
| I think it's disgusting how Pam Bondi couldn't even face the victims. | |
| They printed the names of the victims in the files and made them public, which was wrong and against the law. | |
| And yesterday, a lady called in was blaming the victims, saying they should have known better. | |
| They should have grew up. | |
| Their mother should have taught them better. | |
| Well, these people that were victims, they were some of them nine years old, nine, twelve, fourteen. | |
| And there is in the files Trump with a girl, a young girl, and she was performing something on him and she bit him. | |
| And it's disgusting the fact that Trump's in there a million times. | |
| Okay, but strictly to the Attorney General's performance yesterday on this, or at least her testimony, what did you elaborate on that, please? | |
| She's disgusting, and she's covering up for Trump. | |
| She works for Trump. | |
| She does not work for the American people. | |
| And she is a terrible Attorney General. | |
| And all she's doing is protecting Trump and the Republicans. | |
| GOT stands for Guardians of Pedophiles. | |
| And I'm really disgusted the fact that these poor girls and that there's not been more justification for their crimes that were committed against them. | |
| And it's just. | |
| Okay. | |
| Let's go to Lee. | |
| Lee in New Orleans, Republican line. | |
| Go ahead. | |
| Yes, I want to know why these ladies, children, or whatever they were, why didn't they come out when Obama and Biden were in office? | |
| Why did they come across when Trump got in? | |
| Nobody's asking that question. | |
| It's just common sense. | |
| Well, that's what they didn't assume anything. | |
| What did you think of the Attorney General's performance yesterday on this matter? | |
| Brilliant. | |
| And I think anybody that didn't watch C-SPAN and watch it missed out on must-see TV. | |
| And if you guys run it on a weekend, I'm watching it again. | |
| Well, I'm assuming that since you said you watched it, you said it was brilliant. | |
| Why is that? | |
| I think she called the Democrats out for what they are. | |
| They're not all these innocent people that are worried about victims. | |
| There's 300,000 children that came into this country. | |
| I didn't see the Democrats complain one iota about these children that we still don't know where they are today. | |
| But, you know, that's the Democrats. | |
| That's how they are. | |
| They pick and choose their positions. | |
| That's all I have to say. | |
| Again, this is still available on our various platforms. | |
| If you're interested in seeing this hearing, you can do that on our C-SPAN Now app. | |
| You can do that at c-span.org. | |
| Pennsylvania's next independent line. | |
| This is John. | |
| John, go ahead, please. | |
| I'd just like to say, Attorney General Bond is just a disgrace to the office. | |
| Yesterday, she didn't answer one question directly. | |
| That last guy that just called in, how does the last guy know that nobody came forward during the Obama tenure or the Biden tenure? | |
| And even over the first Trump tenure, pretty much he just recycles what he hears on Fox News all the time. | |
| My grandmother watches Fox News every day. | |
| She treats it as if it's the gospel. | |
| And she has a neurological disease. | |
| She thought for a while that Trende Iraq was coming after her. | |
| That I needed to get a gun to protect her. | |
| Okay, well, back to the topic. | |
| Back to the topic at hand, please. | |
| Caller, when it comes to the Attorney General, make your final comments and then we'll go on. | |
| I think it's just she's making a mockery of the Department of Justice. | |
| She's making a United States Department of Justice look like it has only one motive, and that is the political advancement of Donald Trump's retribution and agenda, which is counter-American in every single aspect of her purpose. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Okay. | |
| Charles is next. | |
| Charles in Tennessee. | |
| Go ahead. | |
| When it comes to Attorney General, Charles in Tennessee, Democrats line. | |
| Hello. | |
| I think it's just. | |
| Hello. | |
| Go ahead, please, and turn down your television while you're at it. | |
| I ain't got my TV turned up. | |
| But anyway, yesterday was just a disgrace to the department up there. | |
| We're forgetting about the whole deal here is these young kids that was molested by these men. | |
| And no matter who it is, it needs to come out. | |
| But, you know, what's going on there is it's awful. | |
| I mean, no wonder these young girls that get molested and stuff never say nothing, afraid to come out because look at there. | |
| We've got Congress City up there just jumping on these little girls. | |
| What is wrong with these people, especially Republicans up there, that don't stand up to this woman, stand up for this man over this? | |
| This is the future for young girls. | |
| And the Attorney General's, the Attorney General's perspective and all this, what did you think of that, especially after yesterday? | |
| That was pitiful. | |
| That was just pitiful. | |
| I mean, it was just a show. | |
| And yeah, I would read it under Obama and him and the rest of them, they dropped the ball on it. | |
| But there's no reason for her not to go do her job. | |
| We're just giving wealthy people the right to do anything to, you know, not so wealthy little girls that's out there. | |
| You can't hold a 10, 12-year-old girl responsible for what they've done. | |
| I mean, stop and think. | |
| This is her kid that's going to live in this world, too. | |
| And as far as what the Speaker of the House said, I know this just officially just. | |
| Okay, well, no, we'll keep it to the topic at hand. | |
| Larry in Indiana, Independent Line, go ahead, please. | |
| You're next up on the Attorney General yesterday talking about the Epstein files. | |
| Yes, I think the judicial system is a total joke. | |
| I think Dan Bondi ought to get 30 days in jail for every time she does not answer a question, a yes or no question. | |
| And I think a movie producer ought to step in and put her in leathers, chains, and away. | |
| Okay, okay. | |
| We'll go to Dale. | |
| Dale in North Carolina, Republican line. | |
| You're next up. | |
| Good morning. | |
| Morning. | |
| Is this the best you can come up with of all the good stuff Trump has done? | |
| Is C-SPAN going to show negative stuff from here on out? | |
| And can you not show some good stuff that he's done for once? | |
| Well, we're showing the Attorney General talking about and giving defense of her treatment of the Epstein files. | |
| What do you think about that? | |
| Well, if you want to, I'll tell you what, show Bill Clinton up there in the blue dress. | |
| Well, let's get to the topic at hand. | |
|
Attorney General's Defense
00:15:42
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| What did you think of the Attorney General's performance on this matter? | |
| Well, all it is is a circus show. | |
| It ain't for no information to, you know, about anything good or bad. | |
| It's just a circus show. | |
| Y'all not reporting the news. | |
| You're just another Democrat hit piece. | |
| Well, that's Dale in North Carolina. | |
| One of the people giving praise to Pam Bondi yesterday was the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Representative Jim Jordan. | |
| Here are some of his comments from yesterday. | |
| What a difference a year makes. | |
| Under Attorney General Bondi, the DOJ has returned to its core missions, upholding the rule of law, going after the bad guys, and keeping Americans safe. | |
| The Trump Justice Department has restored the rule of law. | |
| Murders are down nationwide by 20%. | |
| D.C. violent crime is down by 28%. | |
| The federal surge in D.C. resulted in 8,000 arrests, the seizure of 800 illegal guns, and the recovery of 16 missing kids. | |
| The Trump Justice Department apprehended a suspect in the pipe bomb investigation. | |
| And they've arrested six of the FBI's top 10 most wanted fugitives in just one year. | |
| Of course, they arrested narco-terrorist Nicholas Maduro, and they seize a record number of drugs flowing into this country. | |
| Trump Justice Department put an end to targeting Americans for their beliefs. | |
| Attorney General Bondi rescinded Attorney General Garland's anti-parent memorandum. | |
| Department of Justice ended the practices of using the FACE Act to target pro-life Americans. | |
| They've refused to tolerate attacks on places of worship and investigations of traditional Catholics that we saw in the previous administration. | |
| On her first day, Attorney General Bondi disbanded the Foreign Influence Task Force that was pressuring social media companies to censor Americans. | |
| And the Trump Justice Department has ended law affairs. | |
| The Wall Street Journal adds to the mix when it comes to reporting on the hearing yesterday, saying most Republicans rallied to the Attorney General's defense, saying she was working to correct the Justice Department that her Democratic predecessors had wielded as a weapon against Mr. Trump and his supporters. | |
| Quote, thank you for returning the DOJ back to its core focus, which is on the rule of law. | |
| That was Representative Brandon Gill, Republican of Texas. | |
| Let's hear from Ingrid Ingrid in Colorado, Independent Line, the Attorney General appearing yesterday talking about the Epstein files. | |
| Ingrid, go ahead. | |
| Yes, hi. | |
| I would like to know why she never turned and looked at the victims of those perpetrators, no matter who they were, that their names were redacted and the victims' names were released. | |
| They did it backwards. | |
| What happened? | |
| And they also asked her how many of those perpetrators have they. | |
| Are they actively investigating? | |
| The number is zero. | |
| Oh, she brought up how great of a border policy they have and other issues to deflect. | |
| She never answered the question. | |
| She says she's all about victims. | |
| She never even turned to look at them. | |
| The Washington Post adding, when it comes to those victims that the caller had mentioned, that more than a dozen of Jeffrey Epstein's victims were at the hearing and, when prompted by a Democratic lawmaker, raised their hands to indicate that they had never spoken to representatives of Bondi's Justice Department. | |
| That's part of the reporting that came out yesterday. | |
| Ed up next, Republican line. | |
| He's in Ohio. | |
| Go ahead. | |
| Good morning, you and all your callers. | |
| You know, Trump, over 16 years ago, or longer than that, he was one of the first that just got away from Epstein. | |
| He called the FBI. | |
| He told him what this guy's underage. | |
| At Key Largo years ago, when he was there as a guest of big party, he had people working there, all ages of women. | |
| There was thousands of people one of his big key largos. | |
| And then, okay, he had some, okay, people from 30s, whatever, handing out drinks. | |
| All right, there's all ages. | |
| Then he saw Epstein trying to get some of those people that were working the party to go over to whatever. | |
| He kicked them out, kicked them out of the party, discontinued. | |
| Now, back to this thing from yesterday. | |
| This was 16 years ago. | |
| Yesterday, she couldn't answer any questions. | |
| When you watch the Democrats, as usual, they put up these hearings. | |
| Every time they set up the question, they make accusations. | |
| Half of them aren't even questions. | |
| And when they do, wherever she goes, they answer, they set up yes or no. | |
| That's it. | |
| All these lies, these accusations blatantly cut her off, cut her. | |
| She can't give a yes or no. | |
| That's something that's a lie about. | |
| She tried to explain a little. | |
| Even when she got her time and it went to another Republican, they'd give her time. | |
| It just is never ending with that part. | |
| It's all a show. | |
| There were people taking selfies there. | |
| If you saw at the end of it, all these selfies on the Democrat side, some of these women they brought in, all holding up their things, laughing, smiling, taking selfies together. | |
| All of the Democrats. | |
| You saw the accusation. | |
| Now, all these people, she's done a great job the whole country, not just this. | |
| You know, all these just illegals. | |
| It's only cities and states that are not following the laws, that sanctuary states and cities. | |
| There's 100 times more deported in Texas than Minnesota. | |
| No problems or nothing because they're left. | |
| Okay. | |
| Well, that's it in Ohio. | |
| Nathaniel in Mississippi. | |
| Democrats line. | |
| You're next up. | |
| Go ahead. | |
| Good morning, Jones. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Thank you, my cop. | |
| Look, I watched it here yesterday. | |
| Net Vera, that should have took her out and took us back to jail. | |
| She didn't ask her one question, not more. | |
| And then she tried to talk over the Democrat. | |
| But when she talked to the Republican, she never done it. | |
| She said nothing. | |
| But then when it got to her, she didn't want to talk any other way she wanted to talk. | |
| And I thought that was wrong. | |
| She should have answered the question. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Rob is in New York, Independent Line. | |
| Hello. | |
| Good morning. | |
| Found it very interesting that, you know, people are saying, well, she didn't answer the questions. | |
| They don't ask questions. | |
| All they do is make statements. | |
| It's very sad our system has become a joke. | |
| This is a the United States Congress. | |
| All they do is, you know, give their speeches. | |
| They don't really talk about anything that might make us understand what's going on more. | |
| They don't, you know, some of them did, you know, talk about issues in their own states that the Attorney General could help them with. | |
| But for the majority of them, all they did was give a speech. | |
| And it's really a sorry state of affairs in our country. | |
| And even the callers that call into the show, many of them, all they do is want to go on a diatribe. | |
| So I would ask people out there, be more inquisitive as to what's going on. | |
| Don't just, you know, just throw out some kind of a comment. | |
| Get better, America. | |
| Rob Bear in New York. | |
| Matt Crawley, Matthew Crawley from Facebook, just posting. | |
| Democrats have yet to explain how any of this lowers the cost of eggs. | |
| And then A.G. Bondi is a horror show. | |
| What country am I living in? | |
| Lying, distortion, redaction, hocus-pocus, and hypocrisy. | |
| Oath is not transparency. | |
| When will the circus end? | |
| And the victims get justice. | |
| That is Patrick from Nashville, Tennessee. | |
| You can text us if you wish. | |
| Your thoughts at 202-748-8003. | |
| And if you want to post on our social media sites, you can do that too. | |
| Facebook.com/slash C-SPAN is how you do it there. | |
| And then on X, that's at C-SPANWJ. | |
| Republican Line in Pennsylvania. | |
| Patrick, you're next up. | |
| Thank God that I changed political parties from Democrat to Republican. | |
| The complete lack of civility, the complete destruction of our Constitution Bill of Rights. | |
| You have one congressman after another literally threatening, threatening political representatives who are Republicans with wait until we get into office. | |
| It's going to be the revenge tour. | |
| You have a Democratic Hispanic congresswoman threatening representatives in the American people. | |
| You have Swalwell, who repeat, he threatened everybody, Republicans, before the president was even elected. | |
| Okay, but how does this all relate to the Attorney General's appearance yesterday? | |
| Her performance was brilliant. | |
| It was a political drive-by by deranged Democrats who are engaging in nothing but theater. | |
| She has done more for apprehending murderers, rapists, criminals. | |
| She is an absolutely brilliant jurist. | |
| The sickening nature of C-SPAN, which is there's no difference between C-SPAN and CNN. | |
| You have the same political operatives. | |
| You have the same type of producers. | |
| Well, you're going a little too far in the sense that we're showing you a hearing that we air as many hearings that we do and asking people to engage on that. | |
| And you have your chance to say whatever you wish on it. | |
| Let me ask you this in a follow-up then, as far as you called it brilliant, and particularly when it comes to the Epstein files, how did the Attorney General do there? | |
| She's done a magnificent job. | |
| She's going by the foundation of the law. | |
| She's conducting herself with a flawless direction. | |
| It is above and beyond above and aboard what she has done in the past. | |
| And people need to act civilly. | |
| I mean, what you see from Democrats is if this is, if Democrats get back into office, we are in big trouble as a nation. | |
| We are done. | |
| Gary joins us in New Hampshire. | |
| Democrats line. | |
| Hello. | |
| Good morning. | |
| Well, first of all, I have never seen the gross incompetence of her in my life. | |
| She is so grossly incompetent that it's not even funny. | |
| She should have had enough consideration and heart to turn back to the victims and apologize to them. | |
| These people's lives have been ruined because of the cover-up by the rich and powerful, including Donald Trump. | |
| This is a shame. | |
| I feel so sorry for these victims. | |
| It's not even funny. | |
| This should not be happening. | |
| Those victims deserve justice. | |
| They're not getting justice. | |
| They're getting nothing but the runaround and cover-up. | |
| Mark in Maryland, Republican line. | |
| Go ahead. | |
| You're next up. | |
| Yeah, good morning. | |
| I mean, the Biden administration had four years, and they did everything they could to get Donald Trump. | |
| And they had all the evidence that Tom Bondi has. | |
| She has no new evidence. | |
| So I don't understand what the problem is. | |
| What the problem is, C-SPAN, for two days in a row, were harping on the same topic. | |
| That's a problem. | |
| What a problem is that seven days ago in California, 600 people were arrested for human trafficking. | |
| 170 people were rescued. | |
| The youngest child was 13 years old. | |
| And that's nowhere in the news. | |
| Okay, well, back to the hearing yesterday. | |
| How do you think that she answered her defenses of the release of the Epstein files, particularly? | |
| Well, I mean, I'm not really interested in the Epstein files. | |
| I'm interested in 170. | |
| No, I understand that, but how did she handle the release of those Epstein files? | |
| I think she's done what she possibly can do. | |
| Just last week, a famous NFL, a former NFL coach name was in the Epstein files. | |
| And apparently, people have discouraged him online. | |
| I'm not going to mention the name because I don't think he had anything to do with it. | |
| But every name that comes out is suspicious. | |
| Why hasn't the Justice Department and past administrations, Republican and Democrat, handled this? | |
| Now it's 20 years later in many of these cases. | |
| And some of these people, the names are in here, are dead. | |
| Okay, let's hear from Kevin. | |
| Kevin joins us from Maryland, Democrats line. | |
| Hi. | |
| How's it going today, guys? | |
| You're on. | |
| Go ahead. | |
| Hey, guys. | |
| How's it going today? | |
| Caller, you're on the air. | |
| Go ahead, please. | |
| I can't hear you guys. | |
| Sorry. | |
| Okay. | |
| Let's go to Estella. | |
| Estella in Oregon, Republican line. | |
| Good morning. | |
| Go ahead, please. | |
| Good morning. | |
| I think she did a great job. | |
| The only things the Democrats were doing was putting her down so low it was pathetic that they're able to do that to a representative. | |
| They don't care what they say to her or anything. | |
| I thought she was absolutely brilliant. | |
| She answered the questions she could. | |
| They made sure they asked every yes or no, and that was it. | |
| They wouldn't let her answer. | |
| I watched the whole thing. | |
| Started on C-SPAN, went to C-SPAN 2, went to C-SPAN 3. | |
| I watched the whole thing. | |
| She was absolutely great. | |
| Estella there in Oregon, Republican line. | |
| Again, these hearings are always available. | |
| If you had not the chance to watch it live yesterday, our app, if you want to download it, you can watch it there, our website too. | |
| If you want to see the comments of the Attorney General going back and forth with various legislators, one of the exchanges that took place yesterday was with Representative Becca Ballant, a Democrat from Vermont. | |
| They exchanged barbs according to this write-up during the contentious hearing following a question about senior Trump officials ties to Epstein. | |
| The hearing included several explosive moments, including one in which Ballant pushed Bondi on the alleged ties that a number of senior Trump administration officials have to the Epstein files. | |
| There were many of these during the exchange, but here's a portion of that exchange with the Attorney General and the Democratic legislator from Vermont. | |
| By 2008, we knew that Epstein was a convicted sexual abuser. | |
| And we now know that Lutnick went to Epstein's Island in 2012. | |
| How was that not a deal breaker for the president? | |
| And why aren't you asking questions of the Commerce Secretary about what he saw when he was at the island, which he lied about, not ever going to? | |
| Why are you not asking these questions? | |
| And I see that my time is almost expired, so I will say this. | |
| Do the right thing, Attorney General. | |
| Meet with the survivors. | |
| They have been asking for a year. | |
| Meet with the survivors. | |
| Do the right thing. | |
| I yield back. | |
| Gentlelady yields back. | |
| The gentleman from South Carolina is recognized for five minutes. | |
| May I have 20 seconds of his time? | |
| That'd be up to the gentleman, but absolutely, Madam Senator. | |
|
Tim in South Carolina
00:07:30
|
|
| Thank you. | |
| Thank you. | |
| I was curious if you, Congresswoman, asked Bill Clinton that. | |
| Didn't see one tweet. | |
| Not one. | |
| I didn't see one tweet when Joe Biden was in office about Bill Clinton. | |
| Didn't ask Merritt Garland anything about Epstein, not once, when he was also, I want the record to reflect that, you know, with this anti-Semitic culture right now, she voted against a resolution condemning. | |
| Oh, I just want to be clear. | |
| Do you want to go there, Attorney General? | |
| Or do you want to go there? | |
| Are you serious? | |
| Gentlemen. | |
| About anti-Semitism to a woman who lost her grandfather in the hot club. | |
| Really? | |
| The committee will be in on time. | |
| Talk to Jared Wise about anti-Semitism. | |
| The ranking member knows it. | |
| Can I give like 30 seconds back? | |
| You know, I think the whole committee knows. | |
| Again, that was before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday. | |
| This is a viewer in Virginia. | |
| I've not had any good thoughts about the last four attorney generals. | |
| The president was an idiot for campaigning on Epstein and deserves bad publicity for Democrats can throw at him. | |
| And then Dean from Indiana saying no congressperson can possibly review 3 million documents, but the Dems did nothing with these files. | |
| Were they in power? | |
| Why? | |
| And then adding the statement, Clinton and other Dems with an exclamation point. | |
| Natasha is Pennsylvanian Democrats lying. | |
| Hello, go ahead. | |
| Hey, good morning. | |
| I just want to say quickly that what we saw yesterday was a lot of childish actions. | |
| But, you know, in my own opinion, she came with daggers and she could not wait to throw them. | |
| And I believe that Raskin was correct in giving his introductory comments because I've never seen her sane when she's supposed to be answering questions. | |
| She's just like a child. | |
| She has to throw away, I guess she throws tantrums probably in her office. | |
| But I do know that what I saw yesterday, those young women who were there, the survivors and the family members of survivors, to me, they were owed a lot more respect than what they got from her and her entourage. | |
| Her entourage sons, in fact, they were laughing right behind her. | |
| That was not good diplomacy as far as just, you know, on a human level. | |
| And then I thought that the Amasi was really one that I thought was very powerful. | |
| I have a lot of respect for him. | |
| But I think if people really want to know how hearings and things should be run, take a look at the LBJ movie that's on Netflix right now. | |
| I've read the LBJ papers and I really respect what LBJ did. | |
| And it was contentious at that time also. | |
| But this time it's much different because this person that we have in office has 34 counts on him, shouldn't even be there. | |
| Okay, let's go to Tim. | |
| Tim in South Carolina, Republican line. | |
| Go ahead. | |
| Yes, good morning. | |
| Let's just set the tone right about the hypocrisy. | |
| Let's go back four years when we had Joe Biden. | |
| Nobody wanted to talk about Epstein. | |
| They couldn't use Donald Trump as part of the Ebstein because you and I knew if it had something substantial, they would put it out there to cause him not to win the election. | |
| Now, for the Democrats to come out and put all these survivors behind the Attorney General, where were they at when Merritt Garland was in there? | |
| That hypocrisy is something. | |
| Well, when it comes to the Attorney General herself, how do you think she did yesterday? | |
| I think she did a real good job simply because of what the Democrats is trying to hatch at her for. | |
| Come on now, y'all. | |
| America, can't y'all see what's going on here? | |
| I got a lot of great Democratic friends down here on the bottom, and trust me, they can see the hypocrisy too. | |
| And when we go to voting, it ain't going to look good for all the Democrats in Washington, D.C. | |
| Okay, Tim in South Carolina finishing off this round of calls. | |
| Thanks for all of you who participated this morning. | |
| The House is coming in at nine o'clock today. | |
| And before then, we will hear from two legislators joining us to talk about various topics later on in the program. | |
| California Democratic Representative Scott Peters, he's a member of the Budget Committee and the New Democrat Coalition. | |
| We'll talk about the pending deadline that's coming up on Department of Homeland Security funding, issues of affordability, and other topics. | |
| But joining us next, Nebraska Republican Mike Flood, member of the Financial Services Committee, on deadlines, affordability, and other related topics. | |
| You'll hear from him next when Washington Journal continues. | |
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| Washington Journal continues. | |
| The first of two legislators joining us today, Representative Mike Flood, Republican of Nebraska, member of the Financial Services Subcommittee. | |
| He serves as chair, serves the first district of Nebraska. | |
| Good morning, sir. | |
| Good morning. | |
|
Representative Mike Flood Discusses
00:15:08
|
|
| What's up with the snow out here? | |
| Like in Nebraska, we have ways to get rid of the snow, but you can't get rid of it. | |
| We depend on heat and warm temperatures, I suspect. | |
| We need to send you some snowplows or something in the middle of America. | |
| Well, sticking strictly to Washington, D.C., on Capitol Hill, there's a current debate on whether DHS is going to have funding after Friday. | |
| Where do you think that stands? | |
| I don't think it's likely. | |
| This is a Senate Democrat White House exercise. | |
| Listen, the House, we passed all 12 bills. | |
| We have already voted to fund it. | |
| This is Donald Trump dealing with Senate Democrats. | |
| And I don't think their base is in any mood to do anything. | |
| What's frustrating, though, is under the One Big Beautiful bill, we have funded ICE through 2029. | |
| So really, what we're doing here is we're not paying TSA agents and FEMA and the Coast Guard and all of these other DHS responsibilities, HSI investigators that are looking at child porn. | |
| But I do not think we will have a deal by Friday, and it could go for a couple weeks or even longer. | |
| I was going to ask you, the calendar is for the next couple of, at least next week, both bodies are out. | |
| That's right. | |
| And the speaker did put us on notice and said, hey, be ready to come back on Friday and vote. | |
| Of course, everybody was like, do we have a deal? | |
| And it's pretty obvious to me we don't. | |
| And so we'll get back here within 24 hours if we do, but I don't think it's going to happen before the weekend. | |
| One of those points of contentious is how to change ICE operations. | |
| Where do you stand on those things? | |
| And are what Democrats proposing reasonable to you or not? | |
| Well, you know, I think Tom Holman has lowered the temperature in Minnesota in a significant way. | |
| And, you know, like in my home district of Nebraska, our law enforcement provide scene security when an enforcement action is being taken. | |
| And we have not had this kind of combative situation. | |
| In Minnesota, you've got police departments that aren't cooperating with these ICE enforcement officers. | |
| And that's a recipe for kind of a chaotic situation. | |
| In light of the two people that were killed, I think we need full investigation. | |
| Everything needs to be looked at, just like we would any other officer involved shooting, and then determine what would be in the best interest of the agency going forward. | |
| I think the president does want to find common ground with the Democrats. | |
| We were able to find common ground in our branch, but or in our chamber. | |
| We'll see what happens. | |
| You cited those incidents. | |
| To what degree more transparency could have changed the situation, at least the tone what's happening out there? | |
| Well, I think Tom Holman came in and he did the best thing that he could. | |
| He sat down with the governor and the mayor and he said, all right, here's what we're trying to accomplish. | |
| Here's what we need from you. | |
| We can reduce the number of agents in Minnesota if we can do these things. | |
| And it has been working much, much, much, much better. | |
| You talked about the funding deadline. | |
| Back to that. | |
| I know that there's conversations of, say, a longer CR to satisfy these needs, a short-term stopgap. | |
| Are you satisfied with either of those approach? | |
| You know, I just hate going to the airport, and I go to a lot of airports, and you're going through TSA, and those people that are working at TSA put up with a lot of junk, right? | |
| And on top of it, they're not getting paid. | |
| For God's sakes, like, let's figure this out. | |
| I think that, you know, I would support a two-week clean CR. | |
| I would support a month-long clean CR. | |
| Take whatever time you need to get this done. | |
| This is not, I mean, ICE is still going to function. | |
| This is the Coast Guard. | |
| This is FEMA, TSA agents. | |
| Totally different deal. | |
| But the narrative among Democrats is: hey, fight, fight, fight. | |
| Do not give in. | |
| You know, like, go, go, go. | |
| But when Americans find out that they're not connecting the dots, I think they're going to be like, all right, well, you got to do it another way. | |
| Mike Flood, Representative Mike Flood with us. | |
| And if you want to ask him questions, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202748-8000 for Democrats. | |
| And Independents, 202748-8002. | |
| If you want to text us your thoughts on and text us thoughts to him and questions to him, you can do that at 202-748-8003. | |
| And as always, you can post on Facebook and on X. Before we go to calls, I want to ask you about other votes that took place yesterday. | |
| Efforts on the SAVE Act. | |
| Where are you on that? | |
| And what do you think of the effort overall? | |
| Well, I think if you look at where Republicans or Democrats are on election security, everybody ranks it very, very high. | |
| Showing your ID to vote is not obnoxious. | |
| It does not violate anybody's conscience. | |
| And in Nebraska, we've already dealt with this. | |
| We did it with a statewide initiative that I supported. | |
| But there are states that don't do it. | |
| And I just think it's inherently wrong that you're, if you're not in this country legal, you're not a citizen. | |
| You should not vote. | |
| And we have a lot of these quote-unquote sanctuary cities where I can't understand why we're allowing some of that to go on. | |
| So the SAVE Act, you know, even got one Democrat to vote for it, as I recall, they know this is a deal. | |
| This is something that needs to get done. | |
| And, you know, I think 91% of Republicans and more than 70% of Democrats think this is a reasonable statement. | |
| You hinted at the Senate's difference on these kinds of things. | |
| Where do you think the Senate runs with this? | |
| I think that the Senate is where good ideas go to die. | |
| I don't know. | |
| I don't know. | |
| They are in a much different situation, and they're constantly forced to find a bipartisan way forward, which is the way it's designed. | |
| I support that. | |
| But I think they recognize voter ID as essential. | |
| And so I think it does have a chance over there. | |
| Also, an effort yesterday, a vote yesterday to turn back tariffs on Canada. | |
| How'd you vote on that? | |
| I voted no on that for two reasons. | |
| One, the Supreme Court's going to make a decision here, maybe by June. | |
| We keep saying, you know, it could be next week, it could be June. | |
| And number two, we're going into a negotiation on the USMCA. | |
| Why take the president's leverage out when we're going into the reauthorization of probably the most important trade agreement that we rely on in North America? | |
| And the other thing is, it's not a lawmaking exercise. | |
| Like, I could have voted no to send a message, but there are not the votes to veto it. | |
| So let the president have the leverage he needs to get the USMCA done again. | |
| Representative Mike Flood is with us. | |
| Our first call for you comes from Chicago. | |
| This is Amelia, Democrats line. | |
| You're on with our guest, Amelia. | |
| Go ahead, please. | |
| Hi, good morning, Pedro. | |
| Good morning, Representative Flood. | |
| We all believe in loving our neighbors, yet you are enabling death, destruction of our innocent neighbors like Alex Petri, Rene Good, and Marie Mara Martinez, my fellow Chicagoan, and many vulnerable immigrants. | |
| How can you call yourself a Christian when you let ICE have murderous and unconstitutional dollars any further? | |
| Well, I think that's a little extreme to suggest that anybody that supports enforcing our immigration laws is culpable of murder. | |
| That is the hyperbol that we live with in America today. | |
| Listen, I want the temperature turned down. | |
| I want enforcement to happen, but I want with federal law enforcement agencies to accomplish the goals, the laws that both Republicans and Democrats have written. | |
| So I don't think it's unreasonable to expect state and local officials to work in concert with federal officials. | |
| One of the top issues for Democrats on the ICE demands was targeted enforcement. | |
| Wasn't that the idea going into when ICE was dispatched to various cities across the United States? | |
| Absolutely. | |
| And if the governor and the police officers and the sheriffs would have allowed ICE to go into the jails and take those on detainers that are not here legally, we wouldn't have this kind of enforcement. | |
| Tom Holman said it a week before the second tragedy happened. | |
| He said, let us into your jails and all of this gets easier. | |
| These are folks that have already broken the law or are suspected of breaking the law and they're here illegally. | |
| So an ICE officer goes into a secure detention facility, places that individual in custody and removes them into the process of administrative detention. | |
| That's the way it's supposed to work. | |
| But when you don't let people have access to the jails, you end up with the kind of enforcement that you see in Minnesota. | |
| This is James, and James is in Virginia, Republican line for our guests. | |
| Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | |
| Good to hear your voice, Pedro. | |
| My question is, these women that supposedly Epstein violated, they're in public. | |
| Why aren't they just filing charges? | |
| Why is it up to Bondi to find out who supposedly did something to these women? | |
| Why aren't they on C Spanning? | |
| Pedro, ask them who did this. | |
| Get it out there. | |
| I don't understand the hoopla. | |
| Second thing about the voter ID. | |
| I'm 59 years old. | |
| For me to go to a truck stop buypacker sleekers, I got to show ID. | |
| Immigration, we need to streamline that. | |
| It should not take 10 years, $20,000 for a person to become a legal citizen. | |
| If we can do top-secret investigation on somebody to get clearance, and it only takes less than a year, it should be the same way. | |
| Right now, lawyers are getting paid to represent somebody that our average person should be able to shuffle the paperwork and get sued. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Y'all have a great day. | |
| Okay, James in Virginia. | |
| He had a lot of topics there. | |
| You know, I think we do need to talk about how our immigration system is going to work. | |
| And ironically, the one president, the one political leader in the nation that has the most credibility on that issue is Donald Trump. | |
| And, you know, we have a lot of incredibly hardworking folks that have become naturalized citizens. | |
| One of the greatest things I get to do as a member of Congress is go to the federal district courthouse in Lincoln and see new Americans raise their right hand and get sworn in as naturalized citizens. | |
| It's a beautiful, wonderful process, and they're wonderful citizens. | |
| You know, on the voter ID, he spoke my mind. | |
| And I got a show ID if I get a lot of things, get on a plane. | |
| I don't think that compromises anybody's ability to participate in democracy. | |
| And remind me of the first one. | |
| He talked about the Epstein files, and I think he related it back to the Attorney General's presence yesterday on Capitol Hill talking about them. | |
| Where are you as far as the release and the handling of that release? | |
| How would you grade that? | |
| Well, first of all, I was not happy with the way the discharge petition was done because I think that what we voted on was extremely sloppy. | |
| It did not have a lot of victim protection. | |
| We tried to get Congressman Massey and others to take better language. | |
| But no, they had to have it. | |
| They had to have it. | |
| And if we didn't vote on it, then everybody was culpable. | |
| So, okay, fine. | |
| Discharge petition happens. | |
| It gets voted on. | |
| It gets 400 plus votes. | |
| And now, the same people that demanded it and we told them this is not written right. | |
| Now they're like, oh my gosh, the victims. | |
| It's like, well, you wanted it all in 30 days. | |
| There's millions and millions of documents. | |
| You know, I think that in terms of transparency, all of this is coming out. | |
| And the fact that DOJ is letting members of Congress go look at the unredacted, I mean, none of this happened under President Biden. | |
| I haven't been over there to look at this. | |
| I feel like terrible for any victim of domestic or sexual violence. | |
| And, you know, it's up to the victims as to whether or not they want to attend a hearing or they want to remain confidential. | |
| I just pray that the people that are just trying to stay out of the media do not ever have to deal with their name being in any of this stuff. | |
| Democrats yesterday asked the Attorney General several times to engage with those victims. | |
| Do you think that was a missed opportunity? | |
| It's theatrics. | |
| You know, like I feel terrible for the victims, but Pam Bondi was dealing with people that were there. | |
| And I think a caller before I got on said that was a political drive-by hit. | |
| Like those members of the opposition party were out of control. | |
| They started on fire and they ended on fire. | |
| And there was no way that was going to be a conversation about the facts. | |
| That was an absolute political drive-by effort to undermine the Attorney General and the Trump administration. | |
| You talked about the Department of Justice opening those files. | |
| Do you eventually plan to go over there? | |
| Is your curiosity peaked as far as looking to see what they have unredacted? | |
| Well, as I was just talking in your green room here, there's actually now websites where you can sift through what's there. | |
| You know, as I get called by my constituents in Nebraska, this is something a lot of people care about. | |
| I'm very open to going in there and looking at it. | |
| Hey, Jamie Comer's bringing in the Clintons. | |
| We're trying to do all of the oversight we can do. | |
| This is important to Americans. | |
| And if you're sitting in the middle of America, you're like, how is this allowed to go on for so long? | |
| And under the radar with people that are that powerful. | |
| Representative Mike Flood with us. | |
| Let's hear from Rory, California, Republican line. | |
| You're on with the guests. | |
| Go ahead. | |
| Yes, two things. | |
| Identification. | |
| I remember the 1960s and how they wanted a universal identification. | |
| People keep saying the same thing. | |
| Put your photograph on a social security card like a plastic card. | |
| Put your thumbprint on the back and scan it. | |
| The other thing with the Coast Guard, I do certain security at commercial docks. | |
| If the Coast Guard doesn't get its money, they're not happy. | |
| And then it ends up with security being at the gangways to stop some sailors from bolting off to L.A. | |
| So that's all I have to say. | |
| The unintended consequences of these even partial shutdowns are very frustrating. | |
| It was unacceptable what happened in the fall, 40-plus days shut down. | |
| It's just hard to go back to your district and look at somebody in the face and say, what's going on? | |
| And hey, during the Biden administration, I voted to fund the government. | |
| Not everybody in my party did. | |
| But I think it's important that government function as the citizens expect it. | |
| From Larry, Larry is also on our line for Republicans. | |
| North Carolina, go ahead. | |
| Yes. | |
| My question is this, Chair. | |
| We have laws on the books that state that it's illegal to hire anybody without a Social Security card. | |
| So instead of us going after all these immigrants in the country and shooting everybody and wasting all the money, why don't we go after the employers who hire these illegal immigrants? | |
| Wouldn't that save us a lot of money? | |
| Well, I think there is enforcement against employers. | |
| I know that employers do their very best with E-Verify and systems to detect, but a lot of these illegal aliens, they will have forged documents that when you run them through the E-Verify, they still check out as being legitimate. | |
| Doesn't mean that if you're knowingly hiring illegal immigrants, you should face the consequences for that. | |
| And I think those prosecutions do happen. | |
| Representative, earlier this week, the House took up bills related to housing, the larger issue of affordability. | |
| Put in perspective what those bills would do if they were passed, and how does it fit into the larger affordability picture? | |
| Well, first of all, thank you for asking because the vote on that was 390 to 9. | |
| Housing is not a partisan issue. | |
| Maxine Waters, French Hill, me, Emmanuel Cleaver, we have been working for a year and a half to find out what are the pressure points when we hand out federal money to help states address affordable housing. | |
| How can we take action with low-income tax credits? | |
| How can we get money to cities to offset the cost of infrastructure? | |
| This is a landmark bill that will change our opportunity to build more housing. | |
|
Streamlining Housing Regulations
00:05:17
|
|
| The first one the House has really endeavored upon since 2015. | |
| One of the things that it does is looking along lines of streamlining regulatory requirements and it would also modernize programs to help people with housing. | |
| Can you elaborate on some of those fronts? | |
| Yeah, so HUD administers the Home Partnership Program. | |
| It was authorized in 1993. | |
| It had a bunch of punishing requirements on environmental reviews, Section 3 requirements on the kind of people you could hire and had the AMI average median income at 80%. | |
| And we moved that to 100. | |
| We exempted some more of those projects from the environmental reviews. | |
| We just really got government out of the way and said, hey, you got to go in there, use the money, build the homes, work on density, work with communities that want to grow affordable homes. | |
| And when you get a 390 vote in the House, you're doing something right. | |
| When the president early talked about this, talked about this idea for more starter homes, more places where you can start. | |
| Is that possible in the current environment, particularly when it comes to construction? | |
| Right. | |
| Well, one of the things we did is we're removing the requirement that a manufactured home have to have a chassis. | |
| That eliminates $25,000 of cost and allows a manufactured home to build a second story. | |
| In 1905, you could order a two-story house out of the Sears catalog. | |
| And those houses are still existing all over our country. | |
| So the manufactured homes of today are not the trailers of yesteryear. | |
| They are basically stick-built in a factory, and they're going to be placed on a foundation, and you're going to own the ground underneath them. | |
| And it is the American dream for somebody that needs a home at $225,000. | |
| When you say chassis, is that what you were talking about? | |
| The underneaths and things like that? | |
| When you think mobile home, you know, the requirement on the federal side has been that, you know, since these were mobile homes, one of the requirements the federal government has you have to have a chassis so that you can transport it. | |
| But the reality is, once it's placed on the foundation, it's not going anywhere. | |
| And so right there, we saved $25,000. | |
| Let's hear, let's go to Stephen. | |
| Stephen in Connecticut, Independent Line. | |
| Hi, you're on with Representative Mike Flood. | |
| Hi, Mike. | |
| Well, I didn't call about affordable housing, but it sounds I agree. | |
| Wyndham, Connecticut votes yay on affordable housing. | |
| I do agree with that. | |
| But I'm calling about the DHS bill. | |
| My position is these two officers should be prosecuted. | |
| It sounds like you covered that. | |
| Another thing I would like to see, we get out of dressing these guys up as they're going into Pelusia when they're really going to downtown Minneapolis. | |
| Dress them up as regular officers with a badge. | |
| No more machine guns, don't high-end military-style machine guns. | |
| No more masks. | |
| No more sunglasses. | |
| Dress them as regular old-style 1960s officers. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Should Congress be prescribing what the uniform is for a federal agency? | |
| Let's remember that a lot of these ICE agents are enforcing immigration policy that the organized crime cartels in Mexico don't want enforced. | |
| That's why they blur faces out a lot of the time. | |
| A lot of these agents have been doxxed. | |
| Their families have been targeted. | |
| They're taking on the cartels that were running a multi-billion dollar operation moving people across the border. | |
| And so you've got to find some balance there to protect the identities of some of the officers. | |
| From Kevin is in New York and Staten Island, Republican line. | |
| Good morning, sir. | |
| How are you? | |
| Glad to be on. | |
| I'm all for funding the DHS and funding the government, period, and a lot of its programs. | |
| I'm a former military. | |
| I served overseas. | |
| And my stance is the DHS is a new agency in comparison to before when we were dealing with in the 80s when they were dealing with organized crime groups from Europe. | |
| And there's been laws on the books that if you committed, I think it was in 1992, Ronald Reagan enacted a law. | |
| If you committed six misdemeanors or felony, you automatically did your time and then got deported. | |
| That law people forget about was employed against the Italian HSC and other organized crime groups. | |
| And also, if you've got to remember one thing, they're saying that the DHS is racist. | |
| When you enact a law specifically targeting a group of people, that's racism. | |
| But as far as enforcing laws that are on the books is not racism. | |
| Everybody wants to boast of their ratings during the pre-unemployment areas in New York. | |
| And I'm targeting Mr. Jeffries and Chuck Schumer because they're right now the primary mudslingers. | |
| I live in New York. | |
| I went to Chuck Schumer for some help one time after I gave him a donation for my business, and it fell on deaf ears. | |
| So that just goes to show you the double standard that they have. | |
| Okay. | |
| Okay, Catherine. | |
| You got a lot out there for the guests. | |
|
Stop Excessive Force Act
00:10:26
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|
| Where do we start? | |
| Picture manager, please. | |
| You know, I think he is reacting to what a lot of Americans think is that we're enforcing the laws that are on the books. | |
| And these laws were crafted and supported by Republicans and Democrats. | |
| President Obama enforced immigration policies. | |
| So did President Bill Clinton. | |
| So We have to pivot, make sure that we're doing the best job we can, make sure DHS and ICE have the resources that they need, and then work with communities like Tom Holman has done up in Minnesota to ensure that we're doing it safely, work with the jails, which I think is much safer for the community than the type of enforcement that we've seen in different places and just get through this. | |
| Don't forget, viewers, the House comes in at 9 o'clock today, and we're hearing from one representative, but we will also hear from Representative Scott Peters, a Democrat from California. | |
| Matters concerning the House of Representatives and Congress overall, Representative Mike Flood joining us for this conversation. | |
| Because you serve on financial services and finances overall, I want to get this new information that came out yesterday from CBO saying the budget deficit will reach $1.9 trillion in the fiscal year 2026, 5.8% of GDP. | |
| Well, for the first time, the trend is coming down after we pass the one big beautiful bill, I think $360 billion. | |
| And remember, we couldn't deal with mandatory spending. | |
| That was just discretionary spending. | |
| So, or I'm sorry, we could just deal with mandatory spending, not discretionary. | |
| So, that on top of the budget we just passed, I think we are going to a very good place. | |
| Our continuing resolution spent more than what Tom Cole and the Appropriations Committee were able to deliver together with the Senate. | |
| So, you know, Republicans are in office and we are changing the curve, and we're also seeing increased GDP growth, which we're not going to cut spending to get ourselves out of it entirely. | |
| You've got to have spending go down and GDP growth go up. | |
| Would you, as far as cutting spending is concerned, would you go as far back as austerity measures that Congress saw in 2011, or do you think that's too drastic? | |
| Or if cuts have to happen, where do you think that should start? | |
| In 2011, I was cutting a billion dollars out of the state budget in Nebraska as the speaker there, so I can't speak to the ins and outs of the austerity measures. | |
| But, you know, I was in Greece a couple of years ago, and they went through what my number one nightmare is. | |
| And their austerity measures have been brutal, but they're coming out on the better end of it. | |
| I pray to God we never see anything like that in this country. | |
| Before we let you go, your bio says you're part of the Greenland Caucus. | |
| Yes. | |
| What do you think about this idea of acquiring Greenland? | |
| I think that we are working with the people from Greenland. | |
| The Danish ambassador came into my office. | |
| He's like, We have always said yes to the United States. | |
| We want a partnership. | |
| We want you in Greenland. | |
| We want you in Denmark. | |
| And I think, you know, the president always takes an unconventional path to achieve his goals and ended up at Davos making great progress with Greenland. | |
| And they're wonderful people up there. | |
| And so, as a member of the Greenland Caucus and the Friends of Denmark, I'm delighted that we're in a much better place. | |
| Do you think acquiring it will be a peaceful transfer if that does happen? | |
| I do not think we're going to be acquiring Greenland. | |
| And I certainly do not support any effort that would use armed force to do anything with Greenland. | |
| And I don't think that's where we're going. | |
| Representative Mike Flood, among many things, the Greenland Caucus, the Financial Services Subcommittee, and Representative and Republican of Nebraska. | |
| Thanks for your time this morning. | |
| Thanks for giving us your time. | |
| Joining us from Capitol Hill to continue the conversation before the House comes in, Representative Scott Peters, Democrat from California, a member of the Energy and Commerce and Budget Committees. | |
| He's also a member of the New Democrat Coalition. | |
| We'll talk about that in a bit. | |
| Representative Peters, good morning. | |
| Morning, Pedro. | |
| Thanks for having me on. | |
| Thank you for Jim Vankers giving us your time. | |
| We'll start where we started with our previous guest as far as a funding deadline by Friday when it comes to DHS. | |
| Give us your take on where we're at on that. | |
| Well, Democrats are asking for a retreat from these incredibly destructive practices we've seen by the Department of Homeland Security, particularly in Minneapolis, but across the country. | |
| One of the things that I did, I just listened to Mr. Flood talk about how these folks are masked up and under threat, but ICE has been funded by the Big Beautiful bill to a level greater than the United States Marines. | |
| They're better funded than the Israeli military. | |
| And that military that we funded, the Republicans funded, has been turned against our own citizens. | |
| And this notion that they have to be masked when they're going around to schools and picking up people, picking up people from their legally required appointments as part of the immigration system. | |
| That's just a different picture than what's really on the ground that we've seen with our own eyes. | |
| And we need to retreat from those practices. | |
| I have a bill called the Stop Excessive Force in Immigration Act. | |
| We've got 100 co-sponsors endorsed by a number of people around the country that would just require those law enforcement officers from Department of Homeland Security to observe the same practices that we'd expect from any local police or sheriff's department. | |
| Proportionate response, de-escalation, no masks, proper identification, always on body cameras, because we know our local police are trained in how to do crowd control. | |
| What we've seen is really an untrained force, a force that's out of control, and a force that's unaccountable. | |
| We want to stop that as part of these negotiations. | |
| We want Republicans to come to the table and help us do that. | |
| And if those things don't emerge as far as to your satisfaction, there's a couple of pathways as far as funding is concerned, whether it be a full year, a stopgap, letting the shutdown happen. | |
| What are you most comfortable with as far as funding is concerned? | |
| Well, I did vote to keep 75% of the government open last week. | |
| I thought that was important. | |
| This is a targeted discussion we're having around DHS. | |
| I don't want to shut down. | |
| I've been against shutdowns. | |
| And I hope that the leadership of both parties can come to the table and come to an agreement. | |
| But we have to address these horrifying practices on the part of ICE and the Border Patrol that we've seen. | |
| This just can't go on when we're having people murdered in our own streets. | |
| And we see from this administration a total lack of character, an unwillingness to admit anything went wrong. | |
| Still, unwillingness to say that Renee Goode was not a domestic terrorist. | |
| She's a mom, and now she's dead. | |
| You know, that's got to stop. | |
| We've got to come to the table. | |
| We've got to be honest with what's going on. | |
| We've got to know that this is excessive. | |
| And the American people are seeing this. | |
| And I think this is the appropriate forum for us to address that and to solve this problem. | |
| Our guest is with us until 820. | |
| And if you want to ask him questions, it's 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats. | |
| And Independents, 202748-8000 to Representative Scott Peters, Democrat from California. | |
| Ricardo joins us. | |
| He's in Philadelphia on our line for Democrats. | |
| You're on with Representative Scott Peters. | |
| Ricardo, go ahead, please. | |
| Thank you, Scott Peters, for the work that you're doing on trying to get these agents to take those masks. | |
| I was having a conversation with my son this morning, and he said accountability is the number one reason why these guys should have their masks taken off. | |
| If your face is shown, you're more likely not going to push a 75-year-old lady onto the ground. | |
| Judges don't wear masks, and they're putting away serious, vicious criminals, and they don't wear masks. | |
| And the reason is because of accountability. | |
| Just I want to touch something on the Epstein files really quickly. | |
| I find it very disturbing that Mr. Comer is willing to drag in Hillary Clinton, whose name does not show up once in the Epstein files, but they're not willing to bring in Mr. Nutlick, who's a cabinet secretary, and just lied to the American people, saying he's only seen Epstein once, and he was so disgusted when he walked into his house that he never ever saw him again. | |
| The Epstein files are released. | |
| Now Mr. Nutlick is sitting there saying, oh, well, I did vacation at his house one time. | |
| It was something very quickly. | |
| We just stopped in for lunch with my kids and my wife. | |
| As you see, this is why the interest in the Epstein files is so big. | |
| The lies continue on and on. | |
| So the American public starts to ask, why, what's really going on? | |
| Why are these survivors not getting the justice that they deserve? | |
| Okay. | |
| Okay, Ricardo there in Philadelphia. | |
| Ricardo, it's super shady. | |
| And, you know, look, the Trump administration brought this on itself. | |
| It ran on the disclosure, on promising to disclose what was in the Epstein files. | |
| I think Pam Bonnie's first statement when she got in there was she's seen all this stuff. | |
| She was going to release it. | |
| And we still haven't seen a lot of it. | |
| The redactions are extensive, to say the least. | |
| And I just don't think they're coming clean. | |
| And what you see is, this is exactly what you said. | |
| A lot of folks pretending that they weren't part of this. | |
| And, you know, it certainly turns out that they are. | |
| And I think we really want to see at base what was the relationship between President Trump and Mr. Epstein. | |
| And this is something that Republicans called for, and I think we should follow through on it. | |
| I just, I'm, again, the tone of the hearing yesterday was really was really something. | |
| And the fact that the Attorney General won't apologize. | |
| This administration will never say it did anything wrong. | |
| That's a very low character attribute for a person, let alone an administration. | |
| But look, I think we should do what the Trump administration promised that they would do, which is get these files out and shine some light on them. | |
|
Why Redistricting Needs Transparency
00:09:28
|
|
| In Massachusetts, Independent Line, we'll hear from Martin. | |
| Yes, Representative, thank you for coming on the show. | |
| I have a question for you. | |
| I originally wanted to call to find out when campaign promises turn into campaign lies in regards to Abigail Spanberger or Muradani or Cheryl in New Jersey because she did not want to redistrict in Virginia and can't wait in first month in office to redistrict and gerrymander. | |
| So my question is, how do, when I watch the votes on the floor, how is it that I can't get five people to vote? | |
| Everybody has an independent thought when they get into office. | |
| How do you get 214 people consistently to vote in one? | |
| It's almost like they don't even think for themselves that they're being told robotically. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Please answer. | |
| Well, I mean, everyone's got to be responsible for his or her own vote. | |
| And I think I've voted independently of my party a number of times. | |
| But just on redistricting, look, Democrats proposed independent redistricting commissions for every state, nonpartisan. | |
| Let's do it fair across the country. | |
| Not a single Republican voted for that. | |
| The system we have in California, I think, has been really good. | |
| I, as an elected official, have no input into where the districts are drawn. | |
| I had to watch it happen recently in redistricting in California. | |
| It's completely independent, and that's the way it should be. | |
| Now, I think, you know, unfortunately, North Carolina last cycle drew out three Democrats, and then Texas announced it was going to redistrict to get rid of five Democrats. | |
| And so I don't think it's reasonable to, when someone starts this race to the bottom, to think that everyone's not going to participate. | |
| So California responded, Virginia responded. | |
| But now a lot of states are in this game. | |
| I think it's really unfortunate. | |
| And I think that Republicans should join with Democrats on our proposal that we have independent redistricting across the country. | |
| And that would solve the problem. | |
| But they don't want to do that. | |
| They started this fight. | |
| I lament that that's the road we're going down, but I don't see a way that Democrats don't respond to what the Republicans and President Trump have started. | |
| When it comes to votes, Representative, this week we saw votes on the SAVE Act that was introduced by Republicans, also a vote to resend tariffs when it comes to Canada. | |
| How did you vote on those two proposals and why? | |
| Well, the SAVE Act is, you know, I think voter ID is a reasonable idea, but the notion you have to have a passport, the notion that if you're a wife of someone, you've changed your name, you have to bring extra identification to come just to come to vote. | |
| This is really a way to suppress votes. | |
| And if you look at in the swing states over the past few decades how many instances of voter fraud that you've seen, out of millions and millions and millions of votes cast, all the investigations have never shown more than a few hundred cases of voter fraud. | |
| So this is not a problem that we have to deal with. | |
| The problem we have to deal with is getting more people to vote and I think making the democracy even more representative. | |
| So I just don't think that's appropriate at all. | |
| On tariffs, look, I was supportive of President Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was an effort to use our leverage as a country to get American goods, have more access to the 40% of the consumers of the world that were represented in that agreement. | |
| I don't believe that tariffs are a good policy. | |
| I think if you have tariffs, they should be targeted. | |
| And I think that's what we're seeing here. | |
| Since Liberation Day, what we've been liberated from is job creation. | |
| Even though we had 130,000 jobs announced in January, which was revised downward from what we'd expected, but if you account for that, since last April, the whole year, including January, the amount of job creation has been zero. | |
| And the amount of inflation has been much higher. | |
| You can look at the curves from Liberation Day and gone straight up. | |
| I think tariffs are a bad policy generally. | |
| I think free trade results in better prices for consumers. | |
| And one of the things we want to do as new Dems is get rid of these tariffs, which are justified, I think, in a crazy way by President Trump as a national security issue. | |
| It's not a national security issue. | |
| Supreme Court should take care of that. | |
| If they won't do it, Congress should. | |
| And we saw a good bipartisan vote yesterday that this is BS and we should roll back these tariffs and give American consumers a chance to be able to afford everyday life. | |
| Representative Scott Peters with us for this conversation. | |
| Fred in Florida, Republican line. | |
| Go ahead. | |
| Thank you very much. | |
| Well, I wish I had an hour to talk to you, Mr. Peters. | |
| As far as the tariffs with Canada, listen, what's their tariffs on milk and cheese and dairy? | |
| What's their tariffs over 100, 200 percent on us? | |
| But that's not why I called. | |
| I called because of the Epstein file and what happened yesterday with Barni getting bashed by the Democrats. | |
| This has been going on for 20 years, and all of the redactions on all of these papers is to protect the victims. | |
| Well, you paraded the victims out, had them behind Bonnie yesterday, waving their hands. | |
| This has been over 20 years now. | |
| Let's get rid of the redactions. | |
| You've got the victims. | |
| Let's let them talk. | |
| I know you want to protect them, but you've already got them out in public. | |
| So let them talk and let's get this done. | |
| That's Fred in Florida. | |
| Agree. | |
| You wish to elaborate? | |
| I think we should get rid of the redactions. | |
| The funny thing is, you know, the victims who we ostensibly want to protect were there yesterday saying how awfully they're being treated. | |
| Again, Pam Bonnie asked for this fight. | |
| She said she was going to release everything. | |
| And we've seen this obfuscation continue without any feeling of regret or any kind of apology from Ms. Bondi for the things that these people have been put through. | |
| The person who has been treated well is Jelene Maxwell, who was actually convicted under the Biden administration, put away for 20 years. | |
| And we got this trip from the officials in the Trump administration over there. | |
| And at the end of the trip, she gets a nicer prison setting. | |
| She gets a pet. | |
| She gets special time for her own physical activity. | |
| All this special treatment. | |
| What did she get for that? | |
| Well, what we know is she's not testifying about the truth of what happened. | |
| And I think any reasonable observer would really wonder if the Trump administration wants to see this come out and why they're doing all this to keep it secret. | |
| If they wanted this out, they could get it out, and they're just not doing that. | |
| This is Dee, Dee in Nevada, Democrats line. | |
| You're on with Representative Peters. | |
| Hi there, good morning. | |
| Love the show. | |
| The question I have, I keep hearing about the ICE officers are masked up and all because fear of doxing. | |
| How does that work if they have no ID? | |
| They've been out there all covered up from the beginning. | |
| How have they been getting doxed? | |
| I don't understand. | |
| Thank you. | |
| It's an excuse, Dee. | |
| It's an excuse. | |
| And I think, you know, frankly, they're making the police look bad. | |
| Our law enforcement officers in our cities who put their lives on the line to protect us, they have identification. | |
| They don't wear masks. | |
| And they're accountable for overreach. | |
| And we've set up a secret police here. | |
| The Republicans have set up a secret police. | |
| They've funded it to astronomical levels, $75 billion in the big, beautiful bill. | |
| By the way, all that money is not going to make life more affordable for everyday Americans. | |
| It's going to this secret police force, which is not protecting our cities. | |
| It's turned on our cities. | |
| In my district, we had a raid on a small restaurant in the South Park neighborhood of San Diego. | |
| 20 ICE agents came in with machine guns to a little family restaurant and you'd have thought that a drug kingpin was in there. | |
| They're really going to take out some violent criminal. | |
| No. | |
| They took out four men who were dishwashers and busboys who were not making our community less safe. | |
| They were cleaning up after folks who were enjoying a meal or a date with their family or their friends. | |
| And of course it terrorized the neighborhood. | |
| It does not make us safer. | |
| And those people did not need to be in masks. | |
| They were in no danger of being doxxed or anything else. | |
| But this notion that this is normal that we get from the Republicans or these people deserve protection, no, I think much more. | |
|
Concerns About ICE Actions
00:14:47
|
|
| We want a trained force if they're going to be doing law enforcement. | |
| They should be living up to the same standards as our local police and sheriffs and state troopers. | |
| And they should be making our communities safer, not terrorizing our own communities with our own taxpayer money. | |
| Our guest is a member of an organization on Capitol Hill called the New Democrat Coalition. | |
| Your coalition just releasing an affordability agenda yesterday. | |
| First of all, tell us about the coalition. | |
| Tell us about this agenda. | |
| The New Dems has 115 members of the Democratic caucus. | |
| We consider ourselves more centrist and more interested in getting things done. | |
| And so I'm proud of the affordability agenda. | |
| You know, we want to point out that all the elections have been won recently on affordability, including President Trump's. | |
| I think he's letting us down on housing, on health care, on family care, on energy, on price of groceries. | |
| And so the New Dem Coalition has come up with a plan to work on those things. | |
| I specialize in energy. | |
| And what we're seeing is the Trump administration literally not permitting wind and solar projects that would be cheaper ways to get energy to the American people, subsidizing not new energy sources, but subsidizing the continuation of coal, which is not only dirty, but it's expensive. | |
| We want permits to be issued for all sorts of energy expeditiously. | |
| More energy we get on the grid and the healthier the grid and the more transmission we have, the better that is for consumers. | |
| That's exactly the opposite of the way that the Republicans and the Trump administration are going. | |
| And so we ask people to check out the New Dem affordability agenda. | |
| If you agree with us, let your representatives know you do. | |
| And let's push this through and really address the affordability issues that have driven the concerns of so many American citizens and voters. | |
| Before we let you go, Representative, it was yesterday that the president called on the Pentagon to buy electricity from powered by coal plants. | |
| What do you think of that coal? | |
| What do you think of that call? | |
| Coal is not economical in the United States. | |
| It's been beaten out by natural gas. | |
| And I know that that's disruptive for a lot of the people where coal is produced, a lot of places where coal is produced. | |
| But subsidizing old dirty energy is not the way of the future. | |
| We should be looking at new energy sources like wind and solar and batteries. | |
| That's what the rest of the world is doing. | |
| That's what China is doing. | |
| They're kicking our bottoms in competition over clean energy. | |
| We should be ahead of the game, not moving backwards, and that's what New Dems want to do. | |
| Representative Scott Peters, Democrat from California, joining us, a member of the New Democrat Coalition. | |
| Thank you for your time, sir. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Again, the House is slated to come in at 9 o'clock this morning. | |
| And until then, we will take your calls in open forum. | |
| If you want to participate, you can do that at 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats, and Independents, 202-748-8002. | |
| We'll take those calls when Washington Journal continues. | |
| Fan is as unbiased as you can get. | |
| You are so fair. | |
| I don't know how anybody can say otherwise. | |
| 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. | |
| I love to hear both sides. | |
| I've watch 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. | |
| Best ideas and best practices can be found anywhere. | |
| We have to listen so we can govern better. | |
| Democracy depends on heavy doses of civility. | |
| You can fight and still be friendly. | |
| Bridging the divide in American politics. | |
| You know, you may not agree with Le Dokran in everything, but you can find areas where you do agree. | |
| He's a pretty likable guy as well. | |
| Chris Kins and I are actually friends. | |
| He votes wrong all the time, but we're actually friends. | |
| A horrible secret that Scott and I have is that we actually respect each other. | |
| We all don't hate each other. | |
| You two actually kind of like each other. | |
| These are the kinds of secrets we'd like to expose. | |
| It's nice to be with a member who knows what they're talking about. | |
| Les did agree to the civility, all right? | |
| He owes my son $10 from a bed. | |
| And he's a nice person. | |
| That's fighting words right there. | |
| I'm glad I'm not in charge of it. | |
| I'm thrilled to be on the show with him. | |
| There are not shows like this, right? | |
| Incentivizing that relationship. | |
| Ceasefire Friday nights on C-SPAN. | |
| Washington Journal continues. | |
| Only a few ground rules for open forum. | |
| If you've called in the last 30 days, you can hold off from doing so today. | |
| We appreciate it. | |
| Make sure you pick the line that best represents you: 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000. | |
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| First call in open forum comes from California, Republican Line. | |
| This is Sandy. | |
| Good morning. | |
| Go ahead. | |
| Okay, I have about three points to make here. | |
| First of all, on our ICE agents, I want them masks. | |
| I don't want them being threatened and their families. | |
| And if the rhetoric from the Democrats had not been so intense about this, you wouldn't have people going to peaceful protests with guns and using their vehicles to run people over. | |
| So I have a problem with that. | |
| Not that I ever want to see anybody be hurt, killed, or maimed. | |
| That's a big problem I have. | |
| Voter ID: everybody needs to have an ID. | |
| You can't even go to a casino and win money without an ID. | |
| Why should you be allowed to vote without an ID? | |
| I have a problem with that. | |
| So, yeah, I want voter ID. | |
| I live in California. | |
| The amount of money and taxes and everything that they charge us for and gas and everything else, it's really hard to be a retired person in this state. | |
| Trust me. | |
| The other thing I have to say is the way that Pam Bondi was treated yesterday. | |
| She's doing the best she can with what she has to work with. | |
| And I don't like the fact that anybody was taken advantage of or mistreated or hurt in this way, women, children, or men. | |
| But what I like even less is that the previous administrations did nothing, but they're trying to pin this all on the current administration. | |
| Come on, people, wake up. | |
| Okay. | |
| Okay, Kenny from North Carolina, you're next up, Independent Line. | |
| Yes, good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | |
| You know what really concerns me? | |
| Hello? | |
| You're on. | |
| Go ahead. | |
| Oh, okay. | |
| No, I'll turn something back there. | |
| Is that, you know, what I really heard and it really concerns me is that this, that Epstein ranch was a spying spy, a foreign spy ring. | |
| And if you look around, all the politicians that were there, that's what we should be concerned about. | |
| And I would heard it was ran by AIPEC. | |
| And that's the reason these guys, that's the reason that it hasn't been brought up. | |
| That's the reason nobody has investigated it and been scared, been scared to investigate it. | |
| But it's terrible. | |
| It's terrible when we let foreign people come in and completely run our government. | |
| And it seemed like they got into C-SPAN now because you guys won't even have a show on the Gaza Strip. | |
| I mean, that's the biggest genocide. | |
| And y'all won't have a show. | |
| Oh, I would invite you to go back. | |
| I would invite you to go back in time and check out our archives to many issues when it comes to Gaza and other foreign affairs-related matters. | |
| But we'll go to Ohio Democrats line. | |
| John, hello. | |
| Hello. | |
| I just want to kind of reinforce what an earlier caller said around the concerns she had about law enforcement personnel wearing masks. | |
| Unfortunately, all law enforcement officers who don't wear masks may be subject to being doxxed. | |
| But the problem with it is where I grew up, if someone comes up to you with a mask, you think you're being robbed. | |
| It's a part of doing your job and what they're getting paid for. | |
| I think it's disingenuous to use that as an excuse for people to wear masks. | |
| We just can't have that people wearing masks and representing law enforcement. | |
| Changes in ICE enforcement at the center when it comes to the future of funding for the Department of Homeland Security. | |
| Roll call later in the evening yesterday saying lawmakers making no apparent progress towards a deal on an extension of Homeland Security funding. | |
| And the Senate peers set to leave town Thursday, despite the February 13th deadline to avoid a partial shutdown of that agency with both chambers on recess next week. | |
| The impasse means the department might be without a big chunk of its funding until at least the week of February 23rd, unless there's a breakthrough where leadership calls members back to Washington early. | |
| Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Wednesday he wasn't planning on keeping his chamber in town unless an agreement was close. | |
| Quote, as soon as we can strike a deal, we'll vote on it. | |
| Until then, I don't know if there's any point in keeping people around here sitting around doing nothing. | |
| I think it's important that the people at the negotiating table double down, sharpen their pencils, and strike a deal. | |
| Shea up next. | |
| Shea in Florida, Republican line, Pedro. | |
| Oh, man, there's so much to go with right now. | |
| I wanted to talk about the ICE agents. | |
| Now, you showed, I've seen it on C-SPAN when I'm watching it, and you're showing about the ICE agents and everything, how they go into those people's houses, going upstairs, they handcuff them, they're walking them out. | |
| I mean, they're not throwing them down on the ground and doing all of that. | |
| I mean, I don't understand why can't they go get who they're getting, and I don't think they believe they had masks on. | |
| The lawmakers don't have masks on. | |
| They've been called. | |
| If Trump tells them to go get them, you know, you got crazy people that'll go and try to intimidate people, but that's just wrong. | |
| And what I could see was happening up in Minnesota. | |
| I saw a cold-blooded murder with that Alex Purdy. | |
| They said 11 days ago, yeah, I saw him. | |
| He kicked the taillight of a car, but he never kicked it out. | |
| And when he was helping that young lady, he had his phone up with his left hand, and he was trying to protect her. | |
| They were throwing her down on the ground. | |
| They grabbed him and threw him down on the ground, face down on the ground, and they shot him nine times in the back. | |
| And how do you think your fellow Republicans have responded to that? | |
| I mean, it's ridiculous. | |
| Okay, it's ridiculous. | |
| What the problem is with Republicans and Democrats, I hate parties. | |
| I hate parties. | |
| When the frame was first come out with that, they did that to divide us. | |
| I want to be talking about Pedro what you stand for. | |
| I want to know I'll vote for Republican Democrat Independent. | |
| If you're a good guy and got morals in you, you're a Christian, because Christ said, as much as you do it to the least of minds, you've done it under him. | |
| Arthur Arthur in Michigan, Republican line as well. | |
| You're next up. | |
| Go ahead. | |
| Yes. | |
| Hi, Pedro. | |
| Good morning, Chief Man. | |
| I wanted to address your guest, Mr. Peters. | |
| If they're so hard on this Epstein files, how come Biden didn't release him in four years he was in power? | |
| And then another thing I wanted to say is about also when I go to a hockey game with my son, I got to show ID to get a beer, and I'm in my 70s. | |
| So come on, let's use some common sense. | |
| People need to get back to church and God. | |
| And as far as Lemon case, he violated the congregation and that church and First Amendment, and that is religion. | |
| So that's all I got to say. | |
| I just hope, and I am praying for those two that got murdered shot in Minnesota. | |
| So please, people, use common sense. | |
| The anti-people that are in the peaceful protests wear masks. | |
| So give me a break. | |
| Lori is in Long Beach, California, Democrats line. | |
| Hello. | |
| Hi, is this for me? | |
| Yep, you're on. | |
| Go ahead. | |
| Okay, thanks a lot, Pedro. | |
| You know, I hope I can be clear. | |
| I feel a little nervous this morning. | |
| But the Republicans, the manga-Republicans, keep calling him on and on and on. | |
| Why didn't they do this with the Epstein files over during Biden and Bush, et cetera? | |
| Well, hello. | |
| They did. | |
| In 2006, Jeffrey Epstein was convicted, if I'm not mistaken. | |
| And that's long before Donald Trump was in the picture. | |
| So they were aware of him. | |
| They were doing something. | |
|
Why Didn't They Act?
00:03:03
|
|
| I think that was the sweetheart deal he got, but they were doing something about him. | |
| So that's not even true. | |
| They were. | |
| But the reason it's such a big thing now is because Trump was his best buddy and he's president. | |
| That's basically all I want to say. | |
| There's a lot of other things on my mind, but, you know, it's ridiculous. | |
| The pictures of him and Epstein and Ghelaine Maxwell are everywhere, and there's many of them. | |
| And the sweetheart deal that Ghelaine Maxwell got is very suspicious and very disgusting. | |
| That's Lori from California. | |
| One of the things that took place yesterday, the New York Times reporting the federal prosecutors in Washington saw it and failed on Tuesday to secure an indictment against six Democratic lawmakers who posted a video in the fall that enraged President Trump by reminding active duty members of the military and intelligence community that they were obligated to refuse illegal orders for people. | |
| According to the matters, according to familiar with the matter, said it was remarkable that the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, led by Janine Pirro, a longtime ally of Mr. Trump's, authorized prosecutors to go to a grand jury and ask for an indictment of the six members of Congress, all of whom served in the military or the nation's spy agencies. | |
| But it was even more remarkable that a group of ordinary citizens sitting on a grand jury in federal district court in Washington forcefully rejected Mr. Trump's bid to label their expression of dissent as a criminal act warranting prosecutions. | |
| It was two of those members, Mark Kelly and Alyssa Slotkin, senators responding to this announcement yesterday. | |
| Here's some of the. | |
| If the average citizen had the physical threats and then the legal threats that we've been facing, you understand why people just go to ground, right? | |
| Just the ability to hire a lawyer, right? | |
| And as a senator, I have the ability to stand up a legal defense fund and help pay for the lawyer that I need to defend myself. | |
| The average citizen can't do that, right? | |
| And the average citizen doesn't get Capitol Police when there's 24-7 threats against you and your house and your family and your parents. | |
| So I feel like I'm doing it because others cannot. | |
| And again, I think they're trying to send a signal to others to deter them from speaking by watching what we go through. | |
| And then, you know, I would just say both of us have served in dangerous situations. | |
| Both of us have put our lives at risk. | |
| Neither of us enjoy this. | |
| I certainly have worked alongside the FBI and the Department of Justice as a CIA officer my entire life. | |
| I have great respect for what the career professionals do. | |
| They keep us safe every single day. | |
| So I don't enjoy waking up and having those same organizations targeted and pointed against me for freedom of speech. | |
| I don't. | |
| But he's counting on us to feel weak in the knees and to bow out. | |
|
Joe in Virginia: Masks and Radicalization
00:08:46
|
|
| And I think that's why we went the opposite direction, was to say that point directly to the president. | |
| Yeah, I mean, this is not taking any kind of emotional toll on me. | |
| And I'm pretty sure with Senator Slockin, too. | |
| I mean, we've been through, both of us, harder things than this. | |
| And we're not going to let the president do that to us. | |
| And I really think he picked the wrong two people to go after. | |
| Just let me do it. | |
| Again, you can watch more of that that took place on Capitol Hill yesterday. | |
| When it comes to things to watch out for on the networks today, in about 25 minutes from now, Tom Holman in Minneapolis set to hold a press conference. | |
| He's the White House Border Czar, set to hold the press conference to talk about the situation in Minneapolis and where it is to date. | |
| You can see that on C-SPAN 2 starting at 9 o'clock. | |
| You can also view it on our app at C-SPANNO and follow along at c-span.org. | |
| Again, about 25 minutes from now. | |
| Let's go to Joe. | |
| Joe in Virginia, Independent Line. | |
| You're next up. | |
| Hello. | |
| Hey, good morning. | |
| And first, I want to thank you guys for having this alternative to the mainstream media. | |
| And my concern, I was doing a little research this morning, that our national debt is 120% of our gross domestic product. | |
| And it seems like we're spending a lot of time in Congress worrying about things that, you know, are never going to get solved. | |
| And I'm wondering what this Congress is going to do about our national debt moving forward. | |
| And I don't see any movement on any of that stuff. | |
| Anyway. | |
| That's all I got. | |
| Thank you. | |
| That's Joe in Virginia. | |
| This is Jim. | |
| And Jim joins us from Winter Park, Florida, Republican line. | |
| Good morning, Pedro. | |
| Good morning. | |
| Who would have loved to have gotten on with Mr. Peters? | |
| I'm 75 years old. | |
| I lived in New York for my first 40 years. | |
| When he started talking about gerrymandering and about what the Republicans are doing, gerrymandering has been going on since way before my lifetime. | |
| And I can tell you that if you could bring up the map of Jerry Nadler's district and watch how it goes up one street, back down and around a couple of streets and back up another street, it's not a square, it's not a rectangle. | |
| It is driven by the people that he wants to vote for him. | |
| And this was in the 70s that I saw this. | |
| So the Republicans are just fighting back against what the Democrats have done forever. | |
| As far as talking about face masks and stuff on our ICE agents, our ICE agents, every one of the things that you show on all of your little clips that you show of ICE being picking up people and stuff, they're wearing vests that say ICE police. | |
| They're wearing a badge next to their gun on their belt. | |
| They have a face mask on, and they're doing it because they are being attacked by other people. | |
| If we're going to take the masks off of the people that are trying to arrest these criminals, I want the masks off the protesters who are in the streets throwing stuff at them, yelling in their ears, taking bullhorns and blowing them off in their face. | |
| Why do they have fit masks on? | |
| What's the reason? | |
| The reason is because they're probably supposed to be at work, and instead they're out in the streets doing this stupid stuff. | |
| Maybe they don't work. | |
| Maybe they're being paid by the people that they're working for. | |
| Okay. | |
| Mauria Morell in Maryland, Democrats line. | |
| All right. | |
| Good morning, sir. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | |
| I got a couple issues I'll run through real quick. | |
| As far as what I keep hearing Republicans say with Obama, they keep saying Obama did this with immigration, Obama did that. | |
| And my issue with that is I think our Democrats, when they have their press conference, they need to be ramming that down their throat. | |
| That one thing he didn't do was have an armed militia kicking indoors, arresting people, dragging them outside. | |
| Now, what the other caller said earlier about those masks, we had an incident here in Baltimore where the ICE agents were there to arrest a lady. | |
| They came in masks. | |
| The people in the neighborhood sit outside. | |
| They thought that lady was being robbed. | |
| So they ended up surrounding the ICE agents, and the ICE agents left. | |
| So they had no idea who those people were. | |
| So that's my issue with the masks. | |
| And if they're getting threats and they got masks on, who's threatening them if you can't see who they are in the first place? | |
| And one more thing I'd like to say: I just can't stand the way the Republicans, with their selective vision, because they talk about Ms. Good that was murdered. | |
| Anyone with clear vision can see her tires and wheels turn sharp to the right, not towards that agent, as they say, trying to ram him. | |
| Okay, Morell in Maryland, when it comes to economic news coming out yesterday, the Wall Street Journal highlights information coming from the federal government saying the U.S. economy added 130,000 jobs in January, its strongest growth in more than a year. | |
| It's in a sign that the labor market might be shaking off its recent stagnation. | |
| It also adds that revisions to nearly two years of jobs figures sharply downgraded the earlier reports, particularly for 2025, which saw a paltry 181,000 jobs added for the entire year. | |
| There's more there from the Wall Street Journal if you want to read that. | |
| Let's hear from Ellen. | |
| Ellen in Missouri, Independent Line. | |
| Hi, thanks for taking my call. | |
| I got a couple of points. | |
| First one, voter ID. | |
| I'm 65 years old, and I can't buy a lighter in the convenience store without an ID. | |
| So the hubbub about the IDs is ridiculous. | |
| Secondly, the Epstein files, the more Trump tries to hide it, the more people want to see it. | |
| He's so worried about immigrants that are sex offenders and running them out of the country. | |
| Why doesn't he run the high-money, high-power people who are sex offenders out of the country? | |
| Because they're just as bad as the immigrants. | |
| That's all I got to say. | |
| Susan is up next in Missouri, Democrats line. | |
| Hi, my concern is in Venezuela, when we went there and invaded them and took their president, we used a sonic weapon, which seems to me like is very similar to the Havana syndrome that our CIA agents and some other people have experienced. | |
| So if the president and his administration would send the National Guard and Marines to cities, I fear that he would use this sonic weapon, which he acknowledged that they used against his own people. | |
| So if there were some civil uprising, I mean, he would use that weapon on us. | |
| I'm really disturbed. | |
| I think it's kind of like a crime against humanity to even use that kind of weapon against anybody, similar like if you used chemical warfare. | |
| But yet they used it in Venezuela and acknowledged and admitted they used it. | |
| And now I worry as a citizen that he would use it against us. | |
| The Washington Times highlighting a technology-related story coming out of Texas, which you possibly heard in other places, saying Mexican cartel drones breached the U.S. airspace, according to the Trump administration, leading to the sudden closure of an airspace over El Paso, Texas, Wednesday. | |
| The Federal Aviation Administration reopened the airspace around El Paso International Airport hours after announced a 10-day closure for special security reasons that would have grounded all flights landing and leaving. | |
| It was later Wednesday that the Trump administration tied the spur of decision-making to drones linked to a Mexican cartel. | |
| Quote, cartel drones are being shot down by our military, the Attorney General told Congress. | |
| But several news outlets, including the Associated Press and CBS News, reported that the sudden closure stemmed from the Pentagon's plans to test a laser for use in shooting down drones used by cartels. | |
| Those plans caused friction with the FAA, which wanted to ensure commercial air safety. | |
|
Encourage President Trump
00:03:17
|
|
| And the two agencies sought to coordinate, according to two sources familiar with the matter. | |
| Brian in Pennsylvania, Independent Line on this open forum. | |
| Good morning. | |
| How are you doing today? | |
| Fine, thank you. | |
| Go ahead. | |
| I want to talk about the radicalization of the American people. | |
| The way this is like playing out. | |
| Hold on, let me gather myself here. | |
| You kind of caught me off guard. | |
| Just let me get back to the radicalization. | |
| I feel like this country is being divided. | |
| It's been being divided, not just through this presidency, but through Biden's presidency, too. | |
| It started with Biden's presidency with the way he was treating the Republicans. | |
| I'm not a Republican or a Democrat. | |
| I don't subscribe to either because I actually really do see what it's doing. | |
| I see the division. | |
| And then I want to talk about the mask being worn by these ICE agents. | |
| Police officers don't get to wear masks. | |
| They have to identify themselves by their badges and what they look like, just in case they go outside the bounds of the law and need to be held accountable. | |
| You got a lot of these ICENs that were January 6th insurrectionists that have been pardoned and then hired by ICE. | |
| I'm not sure if a lot of these people noticed or not, but that's a fact. | |
| So, yeah, they should have to wear masks. | |
| We're not talking about people who have proper training, who have taken oaths, any of that stuff. | |
| These people were hired on a limb. | |
| There was a girl, a reporter not too long ago who put in an application for ICE. | |
| She was hired within a week, and she only did that just to see if they would hire her. | |
| All her social media posts and everything were anti-Trump and all that stuff. | |
| They didn't check none of that. | |
| They still hired her. | |
| She didn't take the job, of course, but she just wanted to prove that ICE will hire anybody. | |
| Okay. | |
| Richard in California, Democrats lying. | |
| Good morning. | |
| You're next. | |
| Hi, Richard, Joseph. | |
| Hi, this is Richard. | |
| You're on. | |
| Go ahead. | |
| Okay, yeah, I just wanted to encourage President Trump to keep going like he's been going because he's making a real mess. | |
| And I would encourage people to watch C-SPAN Washington Journal to also watch C-SPAN 2 and 3, for instance. | |
| I watched C-SPAN 2, no, and 3 yesterday and saw Lekwalecha, the former Polish president, speaking from his time in the Reagan era. | |
| And he said in Polish, which is translated pretty well: if you people don't get a smart president, you're going to have to learn to speak Chinese, friends, or Russian, or maybe both. | |
| Also, I see on C-SPAN 3 today or 2 yesterday was Chuck Codd, who formerly used to do Washington. | |
| Anyway, he did a good talk yesterday with people. | |
| What's more, Maryland governor, stated the state of dress was done recently from Annapolis on that same channel. | |
| And these people are doing a good job. | |
| So there's a lot more going on, everybody, besides Washington Journal. | |
| Watch 2 and 3 also, and you get a lot of broad coverage. | |
| Go ahead, Pedro. | |
|
People Running Stop Signs
00:03:27
|
|
| Oh, no, I'll just leave it there. | |
| And I'll encourage people to watch the same. | |
| It seems like you're a close follower of the programming on our networks. | |
| And viewers, you can become a close follower as well by keeping track of all the things that we are doing on our various networks, our social media platforms, our access on YouTube and Hulu. | |
| Again, all for your consumption as part of our effort to you to bring you the activities of Washington and Congress. | |
| Billy is in Indiana, Republican line. | |
| Hello, Billy. | |
| Go ahead. | |
| Hello. | |
| I like to talk a little bit about the national debt that we have. | |
| And that I'd like to see if anybody knows anything about how much money that we have, how much gold we got in Fort Knox. | |
| Trump administration said that they were going to come out with how much we had, but for some reason, nobody ever mentions it. | |
| And also, it seems like that we have turned into a lawless country. | |
| People don't obey the laws. | |
| If these you can't, if the police pull you over and you resist the police officers, then whatever happens to you is on you. | |
| That's how it's always been. | |
| And for some reason, they don't seem to, we don't seem to have any laws anymore. | |
| People's running stop signs out here where I live here in Indiana. | |
| They run stop signs, they speed. | |
| They run 90 mile an hour in a 65 mile an hour zone. | |
| Nobody gets pulled over. | |
| And it just don't seem like our laws is, you know, we don't have any laws anymore. | |
| Okay, Bill Weber in Indiana, giving his thoughts on this open forum. | |
| You can do the same in the next 10 minutes or so before the House comes in. | |
| The Munich Security Conference is set to take place in the next couple of days, in which foreign policy affairs will be discussed. | |
| One of the stories that the Washington Post highlights is Democrats looking to possibly run in 2028 going as well, saying that it was California Governor Gavin Newsom, Senator Ruben Gallego, Democrat of Arizona, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer are among those set to speak at the prestigious security forum in an effort to articulate an alternative foreign policy to President Trump's aggressive interventionism. | |
| The full slate of speakers not announced. | |
| Cabinet officials and several Republican and Democratic senators will be part of it. | |
| Secretary of State Marco Rubio set to lead the U.S. delegation. | |
| And this story adding that Democrats are aiming to demonstrate robust opposition to Trump effectively discarding long-standing international alliances in which he has long been dismissive to assure European nations that they can still depend on the United States once President Trump leaves office. | |
| So look for that to play out at the security conference and information that we'll present to you on this program about that. | |
|
Greg's Pennsylvania Point
00:10:44
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|
| In California, independent line, Willie, go ahead. | |
| I'm sorry. | |
| Willie is in Louisiana. | |
| Democrats line. | |
| Willie, good morning. | |
| Good morning. | |
| Thank you, sir. | |
| Sir, the last, I just happened to be born a black man. | |
| I had no choice on that. | |
| I'm a 21-year military veteran, two tours in combat, wounded in Vietnam, 1966. | |
| The last time I called, I said what should be done to Trump, what he would do to our country, and I lost all my Copper France. | |
| However, what I'm talking about are born into a segregated society and that the Ku Ka Klan will mass too and hoods. | |
| And I grew up in that situation, and I know why these people were in there for the same reason. | |
| Thank you for taking my call, sir. | |
| Take care. | |
| Joanna in California, Independent Line. | |
| Hi. | |
| Good morning, Pedro. | |
| I have a couple of points to touch on. | |
| First of all, in regards to the ICE agents, if we notice, I think that they're supposed to be doing targeted operations. | |
| Targeted meaning they go in, they get their target, and they go off to the next target. | |
| Well, why did they stay in the streets and antagonizing the protesters? | |
| Allow the protesters to protest. | |
| They don't need to stay there. | |
| They should move on to their next target. | |
| Second of all, our police officers are not running rampant in the streets, wearing masks, kicking indoors. | |
| They get a call, they come to the scene, they go away. | |
| Now, my other comment is regarding Pam Bondi. | |
| You know, when a child is backed into a corner and they don't want to tell the truth, they result to insults. | |
| They result to childlike behavior. | |
| And that's what I witnessed yesterday. | |
| It was very embarrassing to watch the Attorney General behave like a child. | |
| She would not answer the questions. | |
| She's supposed to work for the entire country, for the people of America, not loyal to one person. | |
| And obviously, she's very partisan. | |
| She's very, very one-sided. | |
| And she wasn't, she just behaved like a child. | |
| It was an embarrassment. | |
| That's about all I got to say. | |
| One of the exchanges that took place yesterday at that hearing with Pam Bonnie, which you still find on C-SPAN, was that back and forth you had with Kentucky Republican Thomas Massey pressing the Attorney General on the process of redacting the Epstein files and questioned why some information became available. | |
| Here's part of that exchange. | |
| Who's responsible? | |
| Are you able to track who and your organization made this massive failure and release the victims' names? | |
| Are you able to track who it was that obscured Les Wexner's name as a co-conspirator in an FBI document? | |
| Do you have that kind of accountability? | |
| I believe Wexner's name was listed more than 4,000 times about I had. | |
| Yeah, I already told you that. | |
| This is where he's listed as a ton of trips. | |
| Can I finish my answer? | |
| Come on. | |
| Let me finish my answer. | |
| We corrected that within 40 minutes. | |
| He was already, you're acting like everybody's trying to cover up Wexner's name. | |
| Reclaiming my time. | |
| I'm going to answer this question. | |
| Reclaiming my time. | |
| He was. | |
| Mr. Chairman. | |
| The gentlelady can give her answer. | |
| The time belongs to the gentleman from the corner. | |
| So I'm going to put the language of the bill up on the screen. | |
| Chairman, may I give you a question? | |
| It's a political joke, and I need to give my answer on that. | |
| We'll let the Attorney General respond, and then the gentleman can move to the next question. | |
| It's my turn. | |
| Within 40 minutes, you asked me a question. | |
| Within 40 minutes, Wexner's name was added back. | |
| Within 40 minutes of me catching you red-handed. | |
| Red-handed. | |
| There was one redaction. | |
| He was listed as a co-700. | |
| And we invited you in. | |
| This guy has Trump derangement syndrome. | |
| Let's hear from Ernie. | |
| He's in New Jersey, Republican line. | |
| Hi. | |
| I think that C-SPAN is off the rails. | |
| You guys are an arm of the Democratic Party. | |
| And I just have to say that I'm disappointed. | |
| I used to love you guys, but you're Democrats now. | |
| Well, we just showed an Attorney General from a Republican administration defending her thing, her defense of the Epstein files. | |
| So what did you think about that? | |
| Well, she was right. | |
| You guys had all this information four years ago, and you didn't press it then. | |
| I don't know why you're pressing it now. | |
| It makes no sense. | |
| You're an arm of the Democratic Party. | |
| Well, we'll just leave that claim as it is. | |
| John in Pennsylvania Democrats line. | |
| Hello. | |
| Hey, Pedro. | |
| Yeah, I want to call about the tunnels in New Jersey and New York. | |
| They were proposed back in Trump's first administration, and both governors, Merrick Cuomo and Christie, both brought up the money from the states to build that tunnel. | |
| And they were supposed to contribute money from the federal government under Trump. | |
| He re-nigged on that. | |
| So that project was stopped in Trump's first term. | |
| Biden got in office, and that tunnel was appropriated. | |
| I don't know how he can stop that now. | |
| Here again, the tunnel is taking $16 billion from this current tunnel project, putting a lot of people out of work. | |
| And that tunnel is 115 years old. | |
| There's icicles inside there showing you that there's water leaking in that tunnel. | |
| And that's really a dangerous situation. | |
| So, you know, you want to judge this president not by what he says, but what he does. | |
| That's my comment for today. | |
| CBS reporting that a federal judge ruled the Trump administration needs to unfreeze millions marked for New York and New Jersey's Gateway Tunnel Project by Thursday today. | |
| Construction was halted after the president abruptly froze the $16 billion for the project in October. | |
| Although a judge temporarily blocked his actions, workers are still not back on the job. | |
| A temporary restraining order was issued Friday night to prevent the project shutdown. | |
| A legal battle now playing out while crews figure out if they're going to go back to work. | |
| The House again coming in in just a few minutes. | |
| Let's hear from Judy, Judy in Maryland, Independent Line. | |
| Hi. | |
| Well, hello, Pedro. | |
| I've been trying to get you for a long time and I finally got you. | |
| But Pedro, this is my story. | |
| When I heard Donald Tom say, Cease Bay, my friend, I knew that people was going to start attacking you. | |
| But that's not what I wanted to say. | |
| What I want to tell you, I went on a bus trip to the Smithsonian Institute in D.C. because they had the Klan's costume on display. | |
| That's the first thing I went and look for. | |
| When I saw them, they had him on a three-foot platform in a huge circle. | |
| Beautiful colors. | |
| I'm going to have to tell the truth, they were a lot more beautiful. | |
| As I walked around and I walked around it twice, I did not see one name tag. | |
| I did not see a face or anything. | |
| My point is, the government now are hiring people with the same kind of costume, but a different style. | |
| No name tag. | |
| Well, you can't see anything being docked. | |
| How are you going to dock somebody who you don't know who was behind this costume? | |
| You can't do it. | |
| That's impossible. | |
| And when they shot that young man, that petty gentleman, after they shot him, they walked away and went back and robbed him. | |
| Who turns a dead man over after you kill him? | |
| I think that was one of the most pathetic things I have ever witnessed in my life. | |
| And a street of white women in her place in broad daylight in the suburbs, everything has changed. | |
| My father. | |
| Okay, okay. | |
| Greg in Pennsylvania, Independent Line. | |
| The House is just about to come in. | |
| So, Greg, jump on in. | |
| I just wanted to say that the administration under Trump is like, to me, if it wasn't so serious, it'd be like a comedy of errors. | |
| Every one of them has made major mistakes. | |
| None of them has paid any price for it. | |
| They say people under them. | |
| That's still their responsibility. | |
| And putting masks on agents, what is that? | |
| That's not America. | |
| If you can't show your face and wear a badge, then don't take the job. | |
| If you're scared for your family and what might happen, don't take the job. | |
| There's other jobs. | |
| If you want to take that job, then you put your face out there and you put a badge on and you'd be proud to be what you are, not sneaking around with a mask on like a burglar at night. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Okay, that's Greg in Pennsylvania. | |
| Don't forget the Border Czar, the White House Border Czar, Tom Holman, expected to start a press conference just about now. | |
| And if you're interested in seeing the latest and hearing the latest when it comes to activities in Minnesota, especially as the White House presence there, you can go over to our sister network at C-SPAN2 if you want to watch the proceedings there. | |
| Again, other things happening throughout the networks today, particularly as discussions go on when it comes to possible funding issues regarding the Department of Homeland Security. | |
| Stakeholders to C-SPAN 1, our coverage of the House, our C-SPAN 2 networks dedicated to coverage of the Senate. | |
| And you can always follow along at our website at c-span.org and our app at C-SPAN now. | |
| The House of Representatives just set to come in and momentarily from now. | |
| Let's see if we can get one more call in. | |
| Elaine from Minnesota, jump on in. | |
| Have to tell me real fast. | |
| Okay, just quickly, I wanted to speak about the meeting that was had with Ms. Bondi yesterday. | |
| So disrespectful, so out of order. | |
| I just want to say the House Representative was so ridiculous, not allowing questions to be asked and answered. | |
| Secondly, I want to talk about immigration. | |
| Again, I can honestly say I'm a Democratic that agreed with immigration. | |
| I thought that we should get a hold to our borders and people who came across of it. | |
| It's ridiculous to blame it on one administration with immigration. | |
| Okay, that's Elaine there in Minnesota. | |
| We take it to the House of Representatives. | |