CSPAN - Washington Journal 02/26/2026
Aired: 2026-02-26
Duration: 03:02:52


=== Defense Priorities Live (01:40) ===

[00:00:00]  Here, Travis Hill, Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision, Michelle Bowman, and others testify to a Senate committee on banking regulation.
[00:00:08]  On C-SPAN 2, at 10 a.m. Eastern, the Senate convenes and will consider Ryan McCormick's nomination to be Under Secretary of Transportation for Policy.
[00:00:18]  And on C-SPAN 3 at 9:30 a.m. Eastern, the Senate Armed Services Committee holds a confirmation hearing for President Trump's nominees to be Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and America's Security Affairs, as well as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Sustainment.
[00:00:34]  Watch live coverage of all these events also on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, and at c-SPAN.org.
[00:00:42]  Well, coming up on Washington Journal this morning, along with your calls and comments live, Defense Priorities Rosemary Kalanik and the American Enterprise Institute's Danielle Pletka on the state of U.S.-Iran nuclear talks and President Trump's military options.
[00:00:57]  And then the Tax Foundation's Alex Duranti on what's next after the Supreme Court decision striking down President Trump's emergency tariffs.
[00:01:05]  And Politico Congressional Reporter Haley Fuchs previews former President Bill Clinton and Secretary Hillary Clinton's upcoming testimonies before the House Oversight Committee on its Epstein investigation.
[00:01:17]  C-SPAN's Washington Journal is next.
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=== Liberation Day Tariffs Impact (15:59) ===

[00:01:40]  Good morning.
[00:01:41]  It's Thursday, February 26th.
[00:01:44]  This week, President Trump's State of the Union address focused heavily on the economy.
[00:01:48]  The president highlighted what he called a roaring economy and a turnaround for the ages, pointing to a record-breaking stock market and a cooling inflation rate as evidence.
[00:01:58]  However, a recent Fox News poll shows that 70% of respondents still rate the national economy negatively, and 54% say they feel the country is worse off than it was a year ago.
[00:02:10]  So, this morning, we want to check in on your personal situation.
[00:02:15]  Are you better off financially today than you were a year ago?
[00:02:19]  Are there certain things that are more affordable now or less?
[00:02:23]  Here's how you can share your thoughts with us: Republicans call us on 202-748-8001, Democrats 202-748-8000, and Independents 202-748-8002.
[00:02:36]  You can also send a text to 202-748-8003, include your first name in your city-state, and you can reach us on social media, facebook.com/slash C-SPAN, and X at C-SPANWJ.
[00:02:52]  Welcome to today's Washington Journal.
[00:02:54]  Let's start with the top-line numbers on that Fox News poll.
[00:03:00]  Here is when they asked, Are you better off financially than a year ago?
[00:03:05]  24% said that they were better off, 36% said the same, and 39% said they were worse off.
[00:03:15]  Let's take a look at a portion of the State of the Union from Tuesday, where President Trump talks about the economy.
[00:03:23]  For decades before I came along, we had the exact opposite.
[00:03:29]  From trade to health care, from energy to immigration, everything was stolen and rigged in order to drain the wealth out of the productive, hardworking people who make our country great, who make our country run.
[00:03:42]  Under Biden and his corrupt partners in Congress and beyond, it reached a breaking point with the Green News scam, open borders for everyone.
[00:03:52]  They poured in by the millions and millions from prisons, from mental institutions.
[00:03:58]  They were murderers, 11,888 murders.
[00:04:02]  They came into our country.
[00:04:03]  You allowed that to happen.
[00:04:05]  And record-setting inflation that cost the typical family $34,000 in just a speck of time.
[00:04:13]  Now the same people in this chamber who voted for those disasters suddenly used the word affordability, a word.
[00:04:22]  They just used it.
[00:04:23]  Somebody gave it to them, knowing full well that they caused and created the increased prices that all of our citizens had to endure.
[00:04:34]  You caused that problem.
[00:04:36]  You caused that problem.
[00:04:53]  They knew their statements were a lie.
[00:04:55]  They knew it.
[00:04:56]  They knew their statements were a dirty, rotten lie.
[00:05:00]  Their policies created the high prices.
[00:05:03]  Our policies are rapidly ending them.
[00:05:06]  We are doing really well.
[00:05:09]  Those prices are plummeting downward.
[00:05:12]  We're talking about a new Fox News poll about how you're doing today financially as compared to a year ago.
[00:05:20]  But before we get back to that topic, just a quick update on another item of news.
[00:05:26]  This is the Associated Press.
[00:05:29]  With the headline, Cuba says four killed in speedboat shooting were attempting to infiltrate the country.
[00:05:34]  It says that Cuba's government said late Wednesday that the 10 passengers on a boat that opened fire on its soldiers were armed Cubans living in the U.S. who were trying to infiltrate the island and unleash terrorism.
[00:05:48]  The announcement came hours after Cuba said its soldiers killed four people and wounded six others aboard a Florida registered speedboat that had entered Cuban waters and opened fire on the soldiers first, injuring one Cuban officer.
[00:06:03]  It says, continues that the U.S. is now gathering its own information to determine if the victims were American citizens or permanent residents.
[00:06:12]  We'll keep an eye on that story.
[00:06:14]  If we find out anything more, we will share that with you.
[00:06:17]  Now back to our topic on the economy and how you're doing financially.
[00:06:21]  Doug is an Ohio Independent Line.
[00:06:23]  You're first, Doug.
[00:06:25]  Good morning.
[00:06:27]  I'd like to say we were getting ready to have a nice soft landing with Biden.
[00:06:32]  It was going to be beautiful all the way.
[00:06:34]  You could tell.
[00:06:35]  But with the idiot in the White House now, he made it a hard landing.
[00:06:39]  The only people he cares about are the super rich.
[00:06:42]  We didn't have to worry about the Epstein files back then or none of that.
[00:06:45]  And now I wonder if Trump and Pedopal Protector.
[00:06:48]  So Doug, I wonder, since the question is about how you're doing financially, I assume that you're not among the ultra-wealthy.
[00:06:56]  So how are you doing personally as opposed to a year ago?
[00:07:00]  Let's see.
[00:07:00]  Groceries are up probably about 20%.
[00:07:03]  They keep trying to hit new taxes on us.
[00:07:05]  And, you know, it's just horrible.
[00:07:08]  You said new taxes?
[00:07:09]  What kind of taxes?
[00:07:10]  Well, just city taxes.
[00:07:12]  We went to the, like we went to vote last fall, and the town had four different things they wanted to add taxes on for the school, for the fire department, for this, for that.
[00:07:21]  And it's horrible.
[00:07:22]  You know, people can't afford that to own property.
[00:07:25]  You know, I pay about 1.5% of what my property is worth every year in taxes already on estate taxes.
[00:07:34]  And then the groceries are going through the roof.
[00:07:36]  I mean, it's doubled in the last year, I think, or even a little better because it seems like every time we go buy groceries, it costs a lot of money.
[00:07:44]  So, you know, we're not doing that great, but we're still managing.
[00:07:47]  We're trying.
[00:07:48]  All right, let's talk to Betty in Georgia, Democrat.
[00:07:51]  Good morning, Betty.
[00:07:53]  Good morning.
[00:07:54]  We worse out.
[00:07:55]  Am because he got on that state of Virginia, just lied about everything.
[00:08:01]  And the prices here in the George Go store one day, like on a Monday, and the two they went up to something else.
[00:08:09]  All right.
[00:08:10]  And he just tell lies, and I don't understand those people in his cabinet because they don't know what they're doing.
[00:08:19]  They just up there saying something, but they know them Republicans is not for the people.
[00:08:26]  Let's try Sam in San Diego, California, Independent Line.
[00:08:29]  Sam, are you better off financially today than a year ago?
[00:08:33]  No, I'm not better off today.
[00:08:35]  I'm worse off today.
[00:08:39]  The president likes to use the stock market as an indicator of the economy.
[00:08:44]  And the majority of Americans aren't invested in the stock market, including myself.
[00:08:51]  So that's not helping me.
[00:08:53]  And then, as far as the tariffs go, what used to cost $500 now costs $900, and it's making it difficult.
[00:09:03]  You know, the previous caller mentioning groceries, I can't believe how expensive groceries are.
[00:09:10]  I do notice a slight decrease in gas, but that's about it.
[00:09:18]  Other than that, everything's through the roof as far as prices.
[00:09:22]  And I also think that our morality is our budget, and we're spending everything on military.
[00:09:30]  And the money they gave ICE could have gave everyone in this country free health care.
[00:09:36]  And I hope the Democrats and Republicans do defund DHS because the only meaningful agency in that department is FEMA.
[00:09:49]  And Sam, since you're in San Diego, I wanted to ask you about the price of gas, which is typically higher in California compared to the rest of the country.
[00:09:57]  So what are you paying for gas now?
[00:09:59]  I'm paying about $4.70 for premium.
[00:10:06]  And has that gone up or down in the last year?
[00:10:10]  I said it decreased slightly.
[00:10:12]  So what was it like about a year ago?
[00:10:14]  Do you remember?
[00:10:17]  I'd say roughly like $5.20.
[00:10:21]  Okay.
[00:10:23]  And let's take, oh, sorry.
[00:10:25]  Let's take a look at Senate Democratic Majority Leader, sorry, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer.
[00:10:31]  He's a minority leader.
[00:10:32]  He was criticizing the president on this issue yesterday.
[00:10:38]  President's in a bubble.
[00:10:40]  He doesn't have a clue about what the average American people are going through.
[00:10:45]  He just didn't ignore the affordability crisis.
[00:10:47]  He mocked it.
[00:10:49]  Can you imagine sitting down at the table and saying, we can't meet our electric bill?
[00:10:53]  What's going to happen?
[00:10:54]  And you hear the president of the United States is mocking your inability to pay because prices have gone up.
[00:11:03]  While President Trump stood up there congratulating himself, Americans were confronting the reality.
[00:11:12]  Ground beef up 11%, coffee up 41%, rents up, health care costs up, electricity up.
[00:11:19]  Families are spending this year over $1,700 more because of Trump's tariff tax.
[00:11:26]  And he's gloating about it.
[00:11:28]  He's gloating about it.
[00:11:30]  Families don't need a two-hour speech.
[00:11:32]  They need relief at the checkout counter, especially a speech that hardly mentioned any solutions for the American people.
[00:11:40]  You know, look, Trump spent a lot of time praising himself.
[00:11:45]  He patted himself on the back so often that I thought he might fall down.
[00:11:50]  But the American people didn't want hype.
[00:11:54]  They didn't want the kind of stuff he did.
[00:11:58]  And he lied.
[00:12:00]  He just lies.
[00:12:01]  He makes it up.
[00:12:02]  He said we've gained manufacturing jobs.
[00:12:05]  We've lost over 100,000 manufacturing jobs since he became president.
[00:12:10]  He said job creation is on the rise.
[00:12:13]  No.
[00:12:14]  It's at the lowest point in 20 years outside of a recession.
[00:12:18]  I think it was 2003 that job creation on a percentage basis was as low.
[00:12:25]  Wonder what you think of that and how you're doing this year as opposed to last year financially.
[00:12:32]  We have some comments on Facebook.
[00:12:35]  Matt says, yes, he is doing better, quite a bit, actually.
[00:12:41]  Loomis says, Democrats won't admit it, but yes, we are.
[00:12:44]  Costs are coming down.
[00:12:47]  Nate says, absolutely not.
[00:12:49]  I went from two to three jobs and can barely pay the bills.
[00:12:53]  Healthcare is literally killing us.
[00:12:56]  Jack says, no, much worse.
[00:12:58]  My health insurance premium that just covers me went from $525 a month to $1,250 a month.
[00:13:06]  And it's the exact same coverage.
[00:13:09]  Let's hear from Betty in Youngstown, Ohio, Independent Line.
[00:13:12]  Good morning, Betty.
[00:13:14]  Good morning.
[00:13:15]  The reason I called is I'm 78 years old.
[00:13:19]  And when I go to the grocery store, I used to get a little roast for maybe $8 or $9.
[00:13:25]  Now it's $25.
[00:13:28]  It's ridiculous.
[00:13:30]  Milk has gone up.
[00:13:32]  And I now, I have a, I get money from my health insurance every month.
[00:13:39]  They dropped it to $75.
[00:13:42]  So that means I'm going to get bread, milk, maybe some canned soup, and some lunch meat for me to eat for the whole month.
[00:13:50]  Isn't that wonderful?
[00:13:52]  Taking care of our seniors, right?
[00:13:54]  Thank you very much.
[00:13:55]  Betty, how old are you?
[00:13:57]  78.
[00:13:58]  And you're on Medicare then?
[00:14:00]  Yes.
[00:14:01]  Do you qualify for SNAP benefits?
[00:14:04]  No.
[00:14:05]  They would give me $16 a month in Ohio.
[00:14:11]  And here's Joe in Vermont, a Republican.
[00:14:13]  Hi, Joe.
[00:14:13]  Are you better off financially today than a year ago?
[00:14:16]  I can tell you, Mimi, I am way better off.
[00:14:21]  Here's some facts.
[00:14:22]  First fact, when Joe Biden was elected, I had $649,000 in my 401k.
[00:14:30]  When Joe Biden left office, I had $524,000.
[00:14:37]  So I lost probably about $150,000, close to $150,000.
[00:14:42]  So that's because the stock market went down?
[00:14:44]  Is that why, Joe?
[00:14:45]  Yes.
[00:14:46]  Okay.
[00:14:46]  Yes.
[00:14:47]  Yes.
[00:14:50]  Unlike most of these people, I don't believe these people.
[00:14:53]  They work at jobs.
[00:14:54]  They don't invest in a 401k.
[00:14:59]  And I'll reiterate that later.
[00:15:01]  Okay, Trump comes into office.
[00:15:04]  I'm at 524.
[00:15:07]  Since Trump came into office, the stock market has gone up drastically.
[00:15:16]  Now, at first, it didn't go up, and then what happens?
[00:15:19]  It gets to Liberation Day.
[00:15:21]  Liberation Day, the stock market went down 2,000 points.
[00:15:26]  So obviously, anybody like me who's got a little money invested, you know, money that I scraped my entire life to stick together, that money was down.
[00:15:42]  So from Liberation Day till today, my account has made $85,000.
[00:15:51]  So I'm back almost back to where I was before.
[00:15:56]  Actually, I'm beyond where I was before, not by a lot, but just by a little bit, because of what had happened before Liberation Day.
[00:16:05]  You know, obviously, up to Liberation Day, the stock market was going up.
[00:16:10]  When Liberation Day hit, obviously, it took a giant hit.
[00:16:14]  But from Liberation Day to now, I've made $85,000.
[00:16:19]  So along with the.
[00:16:20]  Yep, no, so Joe, so my question is, aside from your 401k, which is doing better, as far as affordability for things that you're paying for on a day-to-day basis, do you feel, because you mentioned Liberation Day, do you feel like the tariffs have been a positive for you or a net negative?
[00:16:40]  Oh, I agree with the tariffs 100%.
[00:16:42]  I understand what Trump's doing.
[00:16:44]  Any moron can look out and see he's using tariffs as a lever.
[00:16:48]  These countries have been robbing us for years.
[00:16:52]  What, St. Albans is 12 miles from the Canadian border.
[00:16:55]  I mean, when you hear the local radio stations talk about all the things that Canada has been doing to us with wood, milk, and all these other things, you think to yourself, holy cow, they really have been ripping us off, you know?
[00:17:12]  All right, Joe.
[00:17:14]  We are asking you the question, are you better off financially today than a year ago?
[00:17:19]  Our numbers are Republicans 202, 748, 8001, Democrats 202, 748, 8,000, and Independents 202, 748, 8,002.
[00:17:29]  Let's hear from Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who was speaking yesterday and outlined economic issues Republicans in Congress will tackle next.

=== Better Off Financially? (12:27) ===

[00:17:40]  We actually laid out sort of an agenda, which we look forward to working on.
[00:17:44]  One of the things that will be immediately on that agenda is a housing bill, which gets at the heart of the affordability issue, particularly for younger Americans.
[00:17:52]  And we've got a bill that's out of the Senate Banking Committee that we hope to get teed up for consideration.
[00:17:58]  We'll try and get on that this week, or at least set up a vote to get on it next week.
[00:18:02]  And I think that would be a very substantial issue that we can deal with.
[00:18:08]  I also think that the issue of energy is a big factor in the cost of everything.
[00:18:14]  We're talking about the affordability issue, and we've got some ideas and proposals to deal with that.
[00:18:20]  I think technology and innovation is also something, artificial intelligence.
[00:18:24]  I think there's a path forward perhaps on some legislation to deal with that.
[00:18:28]  We just heard from some folks who are experts in that field.
[00:18:31]  But there's just a lot of work to do.
[00:18:33]  And obviously, our focus, as I said, is going to be safer streets, more money in people's pockets, and new opportunities for working families to get ahead.
[00:18:43]  And those are the things that in the next few weeks and months we'll be focused on.
[00:18:49]  Senator John Thune, this is Steve on Facebook who says, unquestionably, my 401k is much better.
[00:18:56]  Interest rates are decreasing.
[00:18:58]  Inflation just hit 2.4%.
[00:19:00]  I'm paying $2.29 per gallon for the gas in my car.
[00:19:04]  My tax return is higher.
[00:19:06]  My prescriptions have come down.
[00:19:09]  This is Tony in Long Island, who says the stock market is up as well as my IRA.
[00:19:14]  I am better now financially than a year ago.
[00:19:18]  And Mike says, I'm doing okay to being a retired veteran.
[00:19:23]  I am seeing my neighbors as well as my family members having to pay more for health care, groceries, and utilities.
[00:19:31]  Edwin in Blue Springs, Missouri, Independent Line.
[00:19:33]  Good morning.
[00:19:35]  Good morning.
[00:19:37]  Yeah, I'm way worse off than I was a year ago.
[00:19:42]  You know, like I said, everyone else is saying the grocery prices have been skyrocketing.
[00:19:46]  They keep going up.
[00:19:47]  Every time I go to the store, they're higher.
[00:19:50]  Utilities, they've been increasing gradually over the past several years, and they're just going up and up and up.
[00:19:59]  And then, you know, just everything, everything's just skyrocketing.
[00:20:04]  I mean, health insurance, car insurance.
[00:20:06]  I'm paying more for car insurance on a car I bought in 2018 now than I did then.
[00:20:10]  I haven't had any tickets or recs or anything.
[00:20:12]  It keeps going up.
[00:20:15]  You know, on top of that, after 21 years, my job was outsourced this year, so I'm jobless.
[00:20:22]  Don't have any health insurance right now.
[00:20:23]  I'm 60 years old.
[00:20:26]  So no, I'm way worse off than I was a year ago.
[00:20:29]  So, Edwin, are you looking for work now?
[00:20:31]  What are you doing to make ends meet?
[00:20:33]  Yeah, you know, I've been working.
[00:20:35]  I'm in IT.
[00:20:38]  And, you know, I haven't really looked probably for 10 or 12 years.
[00:20:42]  And I started looking, I was surprised that, you know, the salaries, you would think they'd have gone up, you know, after that much time, but really they haven't.
[00:20:51]  I mean, I was really surprised at how low the wages are compared to the price of things nowadays.
[00:20:57]  It's just, you know, it's, it kind of states just depressing.
[00:21:04]  I mean, I just can't believe it.
[00:21:05]  So, no, I haven't found anything yet.
[00:21:07]  And, Edwin, when you say your job was outsourced, you mean overseas?
[00:21:11]  Did it go to like India or India, my whole department?
[00:21:18]  Scott in Roseville, California.
[00:21:20]  Democrat, you're on the air.
[00:21:23]  Good morning, Nimi.
[00:21:25]  Morning.
[00:21:26]  Okay, so I did a racquetball-size cyst, toothpasting out the back of my head, and I'm on disability.
[00:21:35]  And I am scared to death because the moment, oh, by the way, person, woman, man, camera, TV.
[00:21:46]  Wow, I passed the cognitive test.
[00:21:48]  But the moment that Donald Trump cannot tell the difference between a camel and a giraffe, I'm in trouble because he's going to lash out.
[00:21:57]  He's going to pull benefits from everything.
[00:22:00]  Had his own pockets.
[00:22:03]  So I'm afraid.
[00:22:05]  I'm very afraid because I rely on family and neighbors.
[00:22:11]  And I can still, surprisingly, drive 30 years of martial arts, and I can barely walk because my body's fine, but my neurology is messed up.
[00:22:24]  But this man.
[00:22:26]  When you say you're afraid of losing the benefits, you're on Medicaid then, and you're afraid of losing that?
[00:22:33]  Medicare.
[00:22:34]  Medicare saved my life.
[00:22:36]  And I spent years, you know, decades putting into the system.
[00:22:42]  And now I'm on disability and I get $1,700, $1,800 a month.
[00:22:49]  But there's no way in California to survive on that income.
[00:22:54]  So I'm with my family, and my neighbors take care of me, and they fund me, but the government will not because Trump's building a brand new ballroom.
[00:23:06]  He needs the money for something else.
[00:23:10]  I'm afraid.
[00:23:12]  And Joe, a Republican, West Plains, Missouri, you're on the air.
[00:23:18]  Okay, good morning.
[00:23:19]  First of all, presidents don't go shopping.
[00:23:22]  They don't really know what the heck the prices are.
[00:23:24]  But I'm doing fine.
[00:23:26]  I got more money now than I ever had in my life.
[00:23:29]  I can go buy anything.
[00:23:31]  I live where we have cheap gasoline, $229, $235, $239.
[00:23:36]  Bananas are still 44 cents a pound.
[00:23:39]  Oranges are 88 cents apiece.
[00:23:42]  But if you had a junkie job your whole life and you didn't make nothing, you might suffer when you retire.
[00:23:49]  And most of the people who call in are retirees, and a lot of them aren't too brilliant, or they're not.
[00:23:57]  And if they're Democrats, they're not going to give Trump credit for anything.
[00:24:02]  I mean, I don't, I voted for Trump three times.
[00:24:04]  I do not like him, but I'm doing fine.
[00:24:08]  I have more money, like I said, more money than I ever had.
[00:24:11]  The stock market's booming.
[00:24:12]  I've been playing the stock market for 48 years.
[00:24:15]  I can go buy an airplane.
[00:24:17]  I'm doing fine.
[00:24:18]  So, people, you got to have a better job.
[00:24:21]  You better not just rely on Social Security.
[00:24:23]  You better have a pension or an annuity or something like that.
[00:24:28]  But I'm doing fine.
[00:24:29]  I'll always be fine.
[00:24:30]  So thanks for taking my call.
[00:24:32]  All right, Joe.
[00:24:34]  This is George in St. Louis, Missouri, Independent Line.
[00:24:37]  Good morning, George.
[00:24:38]  Good morning.
[00:24:39]  How are you?
[00:24:40]  Good.
[00:24:41]  I've been listening to these calls.
[00:24:44]  I'm fortunate.
[00:24:46]  I'm going to be 72.
[00:24:48]  I've been retired since I was about 55.
[00:24:53]  So, you know, these prices, they are up.
[00:24:57]  There's no question about it.
[00:24:59]  And people are suffering out there.
[00:25:02]  And it's reflective of how they're thinking.
[00:25:07]  So the problem with Trump is it's like a disconnect.
[00:25:12]  There is an affordability issue.
[00:25:14]  However, let's call it the way it is.
[00:25:16]  Under Biden, which the Democrats don't want to even discuss, affordability was horrible.
[00:25:22]  And things have come down statistic-wise, but people still aren't feeling it.
[00:25:30]  And until they start to feel good about having money in their pockets, et cetera, then you're going to constantly hear this.
[00:25:40]  But one of the also bottom lines is that the president really doesn't have a lot to do with prices.
[00:25:47]  It can be the states that you live in and the taxes that go on to different products.
[00:25:52]  But I mean, you know, because the beef industry didn't harvest their products and we're short of beef, prices are up.
[00:26:02]  That's really not Trump's fault.
[00:26:04]  So, George, you know.
[00:26:06]  I want to show you something on the New York Times, and I want you to comment on it.
[00:26:10]  So, this is on the front page.
[00:26:11]  It says an economic pitch so familiar, you may recall Biden saying it.
[00:26:16]  It says, President Trump is sounding a lot like President Biden these days, at least in one respect, in the State of the Union address that sought to reframe his first-year economic record.
[00:26:27]  Before the midterm election, Trump told a skeptical American public that the economy was doing great despite what many may believe.
[00:26:37]  What do you think of that from the New York Times, George, that this is essentially what President Trump is doing is the same thing Biden did, which was saying the economy is doing great.
[00:26:48]  Don't believe your own pocketbook or don't believe how you're feeling.
[00:26:53]  I agree with that article 100%.
[00:26:56]  First of all, when Biden was saying, by Nox, it's working.
[00:27:03]  And Trump is saying affordability is a hoax, and I inherited this mess.
[00:27:09]  You inherited this mess because that's what you wanted to do.
[00:27:12]  Quit talking about Biden.
[00:27:14]  Put out there what you're going to do and how you're going to do it.
[00:27:19]  And, you know, let's have some action.
[00:27:21]  Let's have some action all the way around by Congress.
[00:27:24]  They want to solve some of these problems.
[00:27:26]  They don't.
[00:27:27]  They don't want to solve the health care problem.
[00:27:30]  Okay?
[00:27:30]  It's not that hard to stop.
[00:27:32]  Medicare for all.
[00:27:34]  It's a great, great option.
[00:27:37]  Great option.
[00:27:38]  All right.
[00:27:39]  But everybody wants to run on issues and not solve any issues.
[00:27:45]  And George was in St. Louis.
[00:27:47]  Carol's also in St. Louis, Missouri, Democrat.
[00:27:50]  Good morning, Carol.
[00:27:52]  Yes.
[00:27:52]  Well, first, I will tell you, I'm 80 years old.
[00:27:56]  I had four children, 10 grandchildren, and now I have altogether grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
[00:28:03]  I have 26.
[00:28:05]  So it's really rough on me to be the grandma I want to be.
[00:28:10]  But on the grocery stores, I can tell you this.
[00:28:16]  A particular product, I have a little four-year-old I watch, and she loves these little Michelina dinners.
[00:28:23]  And I can eat them too.
[00:28:25]  Okay, so they used to be a dollar a piece.
[00:28:29]  All the while Biden was in, it was a dollar a piece.
[00:28:32]  Then as soon as Trump got in, they went up to $1.25.
[00:28:37]  And I thought, oh, well, you know, that's a 25% increase.
[00:28:41]  So now they are at $1.39.
[00:28:45]  Now, that's a 40%, almost a 40% increase.
[00:28:50]  So don't tell me groceries are going down.
[00:28:53]  I don't buy any kind of steak anymore.
[00:28:55]  No.
[00:28:57]  And that's what the little one likes.
[00:28:59]  And hamburger, if I can get it for $6 a pound when it's on sale, I buy quite a bit and then freeze it.
[00:29:10]  So if I didn't own my own house, I would be underwater completely.
[00:29:15]  All right, Carol.
[00:29:17]  And back to the Fox News poll that we started with.
[00:29:20]  This is the president's job performance.
[00:29:24]  So this was released just before the State of the Union.
[00:29:27]  This is the blue is approval.
[00:29:29]  The yellow is disapproved.
[00:29:31]  So overall job performance is at 56% disapprove, 44% approve.
[00:29:37]  When talking specifically about the economy, so here's economy right here, 59% disapproval rating compared to 40% approval.
[00:29:47]  If you look specifically tariffs, 37% approval rating, 63% disapprove.
[00:29:56]  And inflation is at 65% disapprove, 35% approve.
[00:30:02]  We're asking you about how you're doing this year compared to last year financially.

=== Mindset Over Prices (08:19) ===

[00:30:07]  Joey in Atlanta, Georgia, Republican line.
[00:30:10]  Good morning.
[00:30:12]  Yes.
[00:30:12]  Hi.
[00:30:13]  I just want people to know that, first of all, nothing great happens automatically.
[00:30:18]  The president has only been in the presidency for over a little bit over a year.
[00:30:22]  It takes time to turn bad things around.
[00:30:25]  People have to understand the majority of people that are suffering today, the ones that are concerned about their health care and the cost, usually are the kind of people that don't eat right.
[00:30:34]  They don't exercise.
[00:30:36]  They don't want to learn that if you don't take care of yourself, you're going to be the one that's going to be worrying about health care.
[00:30:42]  If you get rid of bad spending habits, you're not going to worry about your financial situation.
[00:30:48]  You've got to learn to change your habits.
[00:30:51]  You've got to learn to change your attitude.
[00:30:53]  If you think positive and create something, build something, become an ownership of something, your financial situation is going to change.
[00:31:01]  But if you don't do that, if you keep doing the same thing over and over, you're going to earn and you're going to get the same thing that you've been getting.
[00:31:09]  You have to change your mindset.
[00:31:11]  You have to think different.
[00:31:13]  It's never too late to change your mind.
[00:31:16]  It's better to change your mind and to change a whole bunch of other things.
[00:31:19]  If you change your mind and you start eating right, you exercise, you spend less, you save more.
[00:31:25]  These are simple baby steps that everybody could do.
[00:31:29]  There's so many people out there suffering only because of their bad habits.
[00:31:33]  If you get rid of those bad habits, if you live within the budget, you don't have to suffer.
[00:31:38]  You're not going to do that to one.
[00:31:40]  You know, Joey, I mean, I totally understand your point.
[00:31:44]  The only issue is that eating right and exercising costs money sometimes.
[00:31:49]  I mean, it's not easy.
[00:31:50]  There's people that live in, you know, what are called food deserts.
[00:31:55]  You know, bad processed food costs less than good food.
[00:32:00]  You know, we're just talking about the price of beef, for instance, or, you know, how much things are costing.
[00:32:07]  What do you make of that argument?
[00:32:10]  I tell you, you know, I've heard that for so many years.
[00:32:12]  You know, I work in the healthcare profession and I speak with dieticians.
[00:32:16]  I speak with doctors and hygienists and dentists and chiropractors.
[00:32:20]  And they all say everything within modern nation.
[00:32:22]  I mean, it's true.
[00:32:24]  Some fancy things that are better for you do cost more.
[00:32:27]  But I guarantee you, though, if you budget yourself, if you think about what you're spending, the things that you buy that you need and the things that you buy that you want, if you can change that little system around and buy only what you need and get rid of what you want, you can afford the little better things in life.
[00:32:46]  You can afford the fruits and vegetables.
[00:32:48]  You don't have to eat four or five times a day.
[00:32:51]  You could control your eating habits.
[00:32:53]  I'm telling you, if you're a healthy person, you're going to eat less.
[00:32:58]  If you're eating the right foods, you're going to eat less.
[00:33:01]  You don't have to spend money.
[00:33:03]  But if you're buying junk food and if you're buying high sugars, your body is going to grave and it's going to want these things.
[00:33:09]  And then that puts people in trouble because now they're going out buying all these non-good things for you.
[00:33:15]  They're not doing anything for themselves.
[00:33:17]  So it's just a matter of you.
[00:33:18]  Joe, we've got to move on to Peter in Silver Spring, Maryland, Independent Line.
[00:33:22]  What do you think, Peter?
[00:33:24]  I applaud the previous caller for recognizing a non-partisan issue.
[00:33:31]  This has nothing to do with Democrat or Republican.
[00:33:37]  We should be spending our money much smarter, and it has nothing to do with either party.
[00:33:42]  Matter of fact, Joe Biden stressed good budgeting.
[00:33:47]  So thank you for supporting a democratic concept.
[00:33:51]  What I'm really calling about, though, is what my mom used to say, and that's the proof is in the pudding.
[00:33:58]  If someone says something, you don't buy it.
[00:34:02]  And you look at what the pudding tastes like.
[00:34:05]  And the reality is, Trump says he's a uniter.
[00:34:08]  America is more divided today than I ever remembered in my entire life.
[00:34:15]  I'm hearing two Americas.
[00:34:17]  I'm hearing the real one where we're talking about that prices are higher, that inflation is still too high, that healthcare is unaffordable.
[00:34:27]  And then I hear people calling in and saying everything is great.
[00:34:30]  They're speaking a party line.
[00:34:33]  They're not telling you the truth.
[00:34:35]  And for the guy who called in about his retirement being able to go up under Trump and not under Biden, I'm sorry.
[00:34:46]  Change your advisor.
[00:34:48]  Mine went up more under Biden and now it's stagnating and it's the same investment.
[00:34:54]  So I'm having my investor change.
[00:34:57]  And what she's telling me is, oh, you have to invest now in Republican companies because they're the only ones profiting.
[00:35:07]  So it depends on who you're invested in.
[00:35:10]  And I'm sorry.
[00:35:12]  The other point is, is that people who are living hand to mouth, paying rent barely, they can't afford to invest in the stock market.
[00:35:23]  So that's only for the rich people to say, oh, well, I'm rich.
[00:35:27]  I can get richer.
[00:35:29]  It's your fault for being poor.
[00:35:33]  And Susan on Facebook says that she is not better off financially.
[00:35:37]  She says, my husband has a heart condition and his medical bills are insane.
[00:35:42]  We can't decide whether to try or let it build.
[00:35:45]  It will always keep building.
[00:35:48]  He works non-stop because that is who he is.
[00:35:50]  I worry for him every day.
[00:35:53]  And Wesley says, Wall Street, yes, Main Street, no.
[00:35:58]  People need to learn.
[00:35:59]  There are two very different things.
[00:36:01]  Wall Street is not the economy.
[00:36:04]  Vivian, Fredericksburg, Virginia.
[00:36:06]  Democrat, you're on the air, Vivian.
[00:36:08]  Hello, everyone.
[00:36:10]  And thank you for taking my call.
[00:36:13]  We're not struggling.
[00:36:15]  I mean, we're doing pretty decent.
[00:36:17]  My husband and I are retarded.
[00:36:20]  But I just don't get it.
[00:36:24]  Biden got a mess.
[00:36:27]  A thousand people were dying a day with COVID when he got in office.
[00:36:32]  And everything was messed up.
[00:36:35]  He fixed it.
[00:36:36]  Of course, the prices are going to go up because he had to raise things to get rid of COVID.
[00:36:42]  But they don't remember COVID.
[00:36:44]  And I just wonder, where are these people that has the $1.90 gas?
[00:36:50]  Because I sure would like to have some because gas now is higher than what we paid when Biden left.
[00:36:56]  We were paying $2.69.
[00:36:58]  It's $2.89 now.
[00:37:00]  So, and when Biden was in, it was $1.59.
[00:37:04]  So where is this gas?
[00:37:06]  Please, Mimi, could you ask the people where they are?
[00:37:08]  They're paying $1.90 for gas.
[00:37:11]  And this Fox News poll asks this question, which is, during the next year, do you think the economy will get better, get worse, or stay the same?
[00:37:22]  So what's your answer to that during this coming next year?
[00:37:28]  It probably will get worse, Mimi.
[00:37:30]  I'm telling you, last July, we paid $356 for electricity.
[00:37:36]  We got a $781 bill for this month.
[00:37:41]  So you tell me, you tell me, is that a good price?
[00:37:47]  I mean, just like I said, we can eat what we want.
[00:37:51]  We can go out every now and then or call out.
[00:37:55]  But everybody don't have the income that my husband has, you know, or live in a home that's paid for.
[00:38:04]  So they're struggling.
[00:38:06]  And I see it.
[00:38:07]  I see it every day.
[00:38:08]  I see it with the people that own a home that can't have food.
[00:38:12]  I'm telling you, I don't know where these people are.
[00:38:16]  Maybe Trump is sending his court a check because they can't be doing good.
[00:38:22]  The medical is up, although I have government insurance, not Medicare.

=== The Great Big Beautiful Bill (03:26) ===

[00:38:27]  The prescriptions went up.
[00:38:29]  The monthly payment went up.
[00:38:32]  Come on.
[00:38:33]  All right.
[00:38:33]  Well, let's see how Willie in Texas is doing on the Republican line.
[00:38:36]  Hi, Willie.
[00:38:38]  Hi, good morning.
[00:38:40]  Really quickly, you had a caller, Joe, I think his name was, who said, presidents don't shop.
[00:38:48]  And, you know, honestly, I think that's true.
[00:38:50]  If you look back in your archives, you'll see George H.W. Bush at the grocery store trying to work some of the brand new self-checkouts.
[00:39:03]  And he was just totally crazy with it.
[00:39:06]  And then there was the one with John Kerry who went into an art and animal store to get a gun.
[00:39:13]  I'd like to get me a hunting license.
[00:39:15]  Okay.
[00:39:15]  Okay.
[00:39:16]  So that's true.
[00:39:17]  Let me just say this quickly.
[00:39:20]  You've got the individuals who talk.
[00:39:24]  I mean, listen to Chuck's name.
[00:39:29]  Yeah, there we go.
[00:39:30]  And I'm a New Yorker.
[00:39:31]  How about that?
[00:39:32]  And Hakeem Jeffries, right?
[00:39:34]  And both of those guys, they talk and talk and talk, and they gaslight people about how the president's not doing this and not doing that and not showing what his plan is.
[00:39:47]  Hello, everybody.
[00:39:48]  It's called the Great, what is it called?
[00:39:51]  The Big, Great Big Bill or whatever, the Great Big America Bill.
[00:39:56]  I can't remember what it is.
[00:39:56]  One big, beautiful bill, Willie.
[00:39:58]  That one big, beautiful bill.
[00:40:00]  Thank you very much, Mimi.
[00:40:02]  What happened there is everything that's in there, okay, shows what his process is going to be going forward.
[00:40:11]  And oh my gosh, wait until these things actually kick in.
[00:40:16]  I mean, you're going to have people now.
[00:40:18]  What are they going to say when they're tongue-tied because everything seems to be working?
[00:40:24]  That's the issue and they can't deal with it.
[00:40:27]  They, the Democrats, has to gaslight everybody.
[00:40:31]  So, Willie.
[00:40:33]  Yeah, no, I'm going to let you continue, but is your point that things are going to get better in the economy as a result of the one big beautiful bill?
[00:40:41]  It's just going to take a few more months.
[00:40:44]  Oh, absolutely.
[00:40:45]  Absolutely.
[00:40:46]  I mean, when you take into account, you know, simple things that to Americans who do these things, you know, what is it?
[00:40:55]  The no bill, no, for, oh my gosh, for waitresses, no taxes on tips, right?
[00:41:02]  Right?
[00:41:03]  You know, things like that.
[00:41:04]  I mean, these are things that a regular American, I happen to know, I was a person who works for tips.
[00:41:10]  Oh, my gosh.
[00:41:11]  I mean, it's a great thing.
[00:41:13]  So what I'm saying is, you know, as far as to answer your question about, you know, the show, I think that I am, well, I'm not totally much better than I was, but I'm hanging in there.
[00:41:27]  I'm hanging in there doing what I think you had a caller who talked about how people can save, people can work their way better through the process.
[00:41:36]  Well, I'm one of those people, you know, not the richest guy in the world, but actually, you know, able to realize that, you know, I need this.
[00:41:46]  I don't need that.
[00:41:47]  I want this, but I kind of need that, so I'm going to get the things that I need and do well for my family.

=== Arizona Teacher's Struggle (02:24) ===

[00:41:53]  That's been.
[00:41:54]  All right, Willie.
[00:41:56]  And Willie did mention Hakeem Jeffries, minority leader in the House.
[00:42:00]  He was criticizing the president on not being focused on the economy.
[00:42:04]  Take a look.
[00:42:06]  And he spoke for almost two hours, less than two minutes on the affordability crisis that the American people are dealing with right now.
[00:42:14]  But we're going to be spending the next several days talking about our ironclad commitment to driving down the high cost of living so we can make life more affordable for everyday Americans.
[00:42:27]  We believe in this country, you work hard, you play by the rules, you should be able to live a comfortable life, an affordable life, live the good life.
[00:42:38]  And we know how that's defined.
[00:42:40]  Good paying job, good housing, good health care, good education for your children, and when it's all said and done, a good retirement.
[00:42:47]  And that's what Democrats in the House and the Senate are going to fight hard to achieve.
[00:42:53]  We're back to the calls now on the question, are you better off financially today than a year ago?
[00:42:59]  Eddie, Independent Line in South Carolina, good morning.
[00:43:03]  Good morning.
[00:43:04]  Thanks for taking my call.
[00:43:05]  Doing a lot better.
[00:43:07]  And Vivian earlier, Costco, $1.95, Greenville, South Carolina, is gas prices.
[00:43:14]  I keep hearing all these Democrats say what they want to do.
[00:43:17]  What they want to do is raise their taxes.
[00:43:20]  And the blue states are the ones that are doing horrible because their taxes are so high, it's ridiculous.
[00:43:26]  Why is everybody migrating from the north to the south?
[00:43:29]  South Carolina has gotten so busy lately.
[00:43:31]  I mean, it's like driving in L.A.
[00:43:34]  I get on planes and they're slam full.
[00:43:37]  So people are traveling.
[00:43:39]  The economy is doing well and going to do better.
[00:43:42]  And I get so tired of people saying, oh, Trump's just wanting to fill his own pockets.
[00:43:47]  Man was already rich.
[00:43:48]  He don't need any more money.
[00:43:49]  The ballroom was donated by other people, not by our tax money.
[00:43:55]  If they want to know where their taxes are going, the illegal immigrants are getting free health care, free education, and the Democrats sit on their hands and say they would rather, you know, that the devil shouldn't support Americans over illegal immigrants.
[00:44:10]  There's your problem, the Democrats.
[00:44:11]  And I'm an independent.
[00:44:13]  So that's, I'm just, I'm fed up with the lies.
[00:44:16]  It's ridiculous.

=== Jesse On Arizona's Teaching Crisis (04:58) ===

[00:44:17]  All right.
[00:44:18]  Let's talk to Jesse next, a Republican in Phoenix, Arizona.
[00:44:21]  You're on the air, Jesse.
[00:44:24]  Good morning, Mimi.
[00:44:25]  Morning.
[00:44:27]  So I just wanted to say that I'm pretty much in the same situation that I was in last year in terms of, and I'm a teacher, and I'll just say, like, the teaching job situation right now in Arizona, they should talk to more people about it.
[00:44:46]  But yeah, it's very interesting.
[00:44:49]  But, anyways, and I was just going to say, I think the state of the union the other day should have been called the status of the status quo, if anybody gets what I mean.
[00:44:59]  And I just really think it's interesting that everyone talks about affordability, and I really just don't think the word that we should be talking about is profitability.
[00:45:11]  And, you know, I teach economics and capitalism, our economic system incentivizes profitability, growth plans.
[00:45:22]  I think everybody should call their bank and ask for a credit limit increase with the inflation that's going on, the stock market going up.
[00:45:32]  And I think everyone just really needs to develop some growth plans.
[00:45:36]  And, you know, it's like you can't go to a bank and ask for money if you don't have plans of growing and paying them back.
[00:45:45]  So, Jesse, what do you think?
[00:45:46]  Since you teach economics, what do you think about the question next year?
[00:45:51]  Do you think that the economy will get worse, stay the same, or get better?
[00:45:58]  Will the economy go up, stay the same, or get better?
[00:46:01]  I mean, and I'll just say this: okay, I tell everybody, defy AI.
[00:46:09]  Use your OI, original ideas.
[00:46:12]  And I was just saying, you know, like the whole macroeconomy is very hard to control, but your micro economy you can control.
[00:46:23]  And I'm just telling everyone, try to turn your hobbies into businesses and support other small businesses.
[00:46:29]  Go to swap meets.
[00:46:31]  I have a small business.
[00:46:34]  And, you know, I really want to meet that guy that you bring on who's in Las Vegas, the small business guy.
[00:46:40]  I forget what his name is, but he seems like a really cool guy, and I want to meet him.
[00:46:45]  And also, I'll just say this: I think I have learned there is something to the power of prayer.
[00:46:52]  And I love the Bible verse, Zachariah 4:10.
[00:46:56]  God loves seeing the work begin.
[00:46:59]  So do not despise your small beginnings.
[00:47:02]  And I think everyone just needs to take a breath right now, pray, and try to get peace and new strength for moving forward.
[00:47:10]  And I think that's Jack, Democrat, Mechanic Falls, Maine.
[00:47:17]  Good morning.
[00:47:19]  Good morning, Mimi.
[00:47:20]  Thanks for taking my call.
[00:47:22]  I'd like to tell that gentleman I agree with him with the prayers.
[00:47:26]  Good thinking.
[00:47:28]  I wanted to say the President wants to tell us how to stretch our dollars.
[00:47:33]  Well, that's really nice of him and everything, but here's how it works.
[00:47:37]  The government starts out with a small step and takes small steps from there on out.
[00:47:41]  The Trump administration would like to see us all be smarter with our groceries.
[00:47:47]  Well, next time he comes in with a great idea, it's probably going to be, I'll tell you when you can buy your groceries too.
[00:47:55]  And then there'll be another step, and it will be, I'll tell you if you can buy your groceries.
[00:47:59]  This is how the government works, and we all know it.
[00:48:02]  So watch out.
[00:48:03]  Be careful what you agree with now, because it's not the end of the line.
[00:48:08]  Again, I just want to say thanks to the guy who spoke about prayers.
[00:48:12]  Let's all pray a little bit more, too, okay?
[00:48:14]  Have a nice day, everybody.
[00:48:15]  Love you all.
[00:48:16]  Bye.
[00:48:17]  In Jessup, Georgia, on the Republican line, Kel, good morning to you.
[00:48:22]  Good morning.
[00:48:22]  How are you doing today?
[00:48:24]  Good.
[00:48:26]  In reference to, I guess, the betterment of a year, yes, I do think the financial stability is not where it should be, but I do think that I'm much better off.
[00:48:43]  And I would like to comment that the young man just mentioned about the Bible, in Judges 1, they were saying after the death of Joshua,
[00:48:58]  in a sense, and I'm not going to be long-winded, that Israelites were trying, well, went forth before God and actually prayed before God to send forth someone who would it be to fight off the Canaanites.

=== Top Priority: Economy and Inflation (02:54) ===

[00:49:15]  And I think that Mr. Trump, President Trump, is doing a great job with fighting off the inflation that Joseph Biden has left and resorted the socioeconomic imbalance which now prevails and compel our pockets.
[00:49:40]  Even though some people may blame President Trump for the financial status that they may be inflicted on, but they must also look at that the four-year inflation from the Joseph Biden administration, Mr. Trump or President Trump, has to reconstruct the economy, build it back up,
[00:50:05]  boost it back up as he did in his first administration, providing stimulus packages or a package in a sense, and go from there.
[00:50:16]  So, Kel, I want to ask you, if you don't mind, in a Fox News poll, it says that, so it was asking what should President Trump's top priority be?
[00:50:28]  And people said that by far the top priority should be inflation and prices and the economy and jobs more than anything else, like, for instance, immigration or health care or things like that.
[00:50:44]  Do you think that the President has been focused enough, in your opinion, on the economy and prices?
[00:50:53]  I think in regards of the focus of prioritization, I do think President Trump administration and himself, with even his campaign, when he first got into, before he got into office, he went to work at a McDonald's.
[00:51:19]  And at that McDonald's, I think that the sweat in the gears gave Mr. Trump or gave President Trump the ideology that he too would try to incorporate a fixation to off-balance the inflation, if I can say it like that.
[00:51:41]  Even though he would also have to infuse illegal immigration because the program or the legislation with illegal immigration, you have like, say, for instance, if you have five illegal immigrants come in and you have two innocent allegiant, I got to move on.

=== Focusing on Inflation Relief (07:28) ===

[00:52:09]  Sorry, John in New Jersey, Independent Line.
[00:52:12]  Go ahead, John.
[00:52:15]  I'd say to you that some things are higher and some things are lower.
[00:52:20]  So it's unbalanced.
[00:52:22]  Overall, budget hasn't really been that impacted.
[00:52:27]  However, I would say I saw an interview, you talked about next year, I saw an interview with Secretary Besson.
[00:52:35]  And, you know, he said that something that I'm concerned about, he said that when he first came into office, he spoke to Trump, and President Trump asked him, what are we going to do about this debt, which is $38 trillion now?
[00:52:51]  And, you know, he basically looked at the problem and just said, look, you can't raise income tax, you know, tax income tax rates or tax citizens more because that'll throw our country into a depression.
[00:53:07]  You can't count on Congress cutting spending because look at Besson didn't say this, I'm paraphrasing, but the Congress, look what happened where everybody lost their mind when Doge was trying to slash stuff from the budget.
[00:53:24]  The media basically beat up all the efforts in order to do that.
[00:53:31]  So cutting spending isn't going to get you there.
[00:53:34]  So then what's the question?
[00:53:35]  How can you do it?
[00:53:37]  So there's two things that they came to think would be the way to go.
[00:53:41]  One would be in the short term to apply tariffs to get revenue coming in right away and then use those tariffs as an incentive to increase growth because that's the other piece, the other leg of the stool, get growth up substantially by getting manufacturing and companies to headquarter here and put more people on their payrolls, et cetera.
[00:54:06]  So between growth and tariff revenue, you could take a real swipe at the debt.
[00:54:13]  And, you know, I would say this to you.
[00:54:16]  Presidents, you know, can't direct, we don't live in a socialist or communist country.
[00:54:22]  So presidents can't directly control the price of goods.
[00:54:26]  What they can do is provide some relief with some tax relief, tax cuts, like Trump has done with the no tips, no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, et cetera, and drive wages through competition and bringing companies in so they'll hire more and increase revenues into the Treasury that way.
[00:54:55]  So I'm optimistic about next year, if everything goes through and he's able to apply tariffs.
[00:55:04]  The short-term tariff issue is going to set them back a little bit.
[00:55:08]  And the thing is— Well, John, we are going to talk about tariffs later in the program, so make sure you stay with us for that.
[00:55:14]  On the line for Democrats in Georgia, Katrina, good morning.
[00:55:19]  Hi, good morning.
[00:55:21]  Just from the caller that just was, you know, speaking, as far as Doge, Doge didn't do anything but add more chaos to the system and gave a man who loved chaos this opportunity to really destroy this country.
[00:55:36]  The president does not, and I don't even want to call him president, Donald Trump does not focus on real people and real people issues.
[00:55:46]  He should be focusing on the economy.
[00:55:49]  He should be focusing on pricing.
[00:55:50]  He should be focusing on inflation.
[00:55:54]  He should be focusing on health care, but he's not focusing on that.
[00:55:58]  He's focusing on ballrooms.
[00:56:00]  He's focusing on immigration where immigration has never been a true issue.
[00:56:05]  They just wanted to point at the border and say, all these people was coming over here, but it wasn't a problem when he was hiring them when he had hit down at his hotels and resorts.
[00:56:17]  So it was never a problem for him until he wants to use that to get himself in office and continue to steal money from the American people.
[00:56:27]  Please understand, people do not mind you getting on TV and saying that we're struggling because we are struggling.
[00:56:34]  The common people are struggling.
[00:56:36]  These 401ks and things of nature that people keep coming on here and talking about, those are not realistically things that's going to hold you in place as a common person.
[00:56:45]  Like one of the callers said, you're living day to day, so you don't have money to stash away or add to 401ks, okay?
[00:56:54]  So if you need every coin to make tomorrow, you're going to use that coin to make tomorrow.
[00:56:59]  And all this 401k going up and all I'm living like this and I'm living like that.
[00:57:04]  That's that greed.
[00:57:05]  And that's what this country is built on.
[00:57:06]  A bunch of greedy people who don't understand there's people under you, but beneath you, lower than you, that needs assistance.
[00:57:14]  And we never give a helping hand, but they want to call themselves Christians.
[00:57:17]  That's what I don't understand.
[00:57:18]  And that's why a lot of people walk away from religion because you sit up here and punch in your stomach and your chest and say, hey, I'm making this much money and this, but you're not looking at the next man who's struggling.
[00:57:29]  You can walk over him and don't care nothing about it.
[00:57:32]  We have people out here that work all their lives, have nothing to show for it.
[00:57:36]  But the simple fact is jobs do not increase.
[00:57:39]  Their payroll does not increase.
[00:57:40]  They don't think about giving you a raise.
[00:57:42]  And if they give you a raise, it's 5 cents, 2 cents.
[00:57:46]  Who is living like that?
[00:57:47]  But the economy continues to grow.
[00:57:49]  Stuff continues to go up, but they're not accommodating for that.
[00:57:53]  All right, Katrina, and that's the last call for this segment.
[00:57:56]  More to come, though.
[00:57:57]  Later on the journal, we'll have Tax Foundation senior economist Alex Duranti.
[00:58:02]  He'll discuss what comes next after the Supreme Court ruling that struck down President Trump's emergency tariffs last week.
[00:58:08]  But coming up next, a roundtable discussion on the state of U.S.-Iran nuclear talks and the military options that President Trump is weighing if Tehran does not give up its nuclear program.
[00:58:20]  We'll be joined by Defense Priority's Rosemary Kalanick and American Enterprise Institute's Danielle Pletka.
[00:58:34]  Feast band is as unbiased as you can get.
[00:58:38]  You are so fair.
[00:58:40]  I don't know how anybody can say otherwise.
[00:58:42]  You guys do the most important work for everyone in this country.
[00:58:46]  I love C-SPAN because I get to hear all the voices.
[00:58:49]  You bring these divergent viewpoints and you present both sides of an issue and you allow people to make up their minds.
[00:58:56]  I absolutely love C-SPAN.
[00:58:58]  I love to hear both sides.
[00:59:00]  I've watched every morning and it is unbiased.
[00:59:03]  And you bring in factual information for the callers to understand where they are in their comments.
[00:59:10]  This is probably the only place that we can hear honest opinion of Americans across the country.
[00:59:15]  You guys at C-SPAN are doing such a wonderful job of allowing free exchange of ideas without a lot of interruptions.
[00:59:23]  Thank you, C-SPAN, for being a light in the dark.
[00:59:30]  Best ideas and best practices can be found anywhere.
[00:59:32]  We have to listen so we can govern better.
[00:59:34]  Democracy depends on heavy doses of civility.

=== Nuclear Negotiations Buildup (15:08) ===

[00:59:37]  You can fight and still be friendly.
[00:59:40]  Bridging the divide in American politics.
[00:59:42]  You know, you may not agree with the Democrat on everything, but you can find areas where you do agree.
[00:59:46]  He's a pretty likable guy as well.
[00:59:47]  Chris Kins and I are actually friends.
[00:59:49]  He votes wrong all the time, but we're actually friends.
[00:59:52]  A horrible secret that Scott and I have is that we actually respect each other.
[00:59:55]  We all don't hate each other.
[00:59:57]  You two actually kind of like each other.
[00:59:59]  These are the kinds of secrets we'd like to expose.
[01:00:01]  It's nice to be with a member who knows what they're talking about.
[01:00:03]  Les did agree to the civility, all right?
[01:00:06]  He owes my son $10 from a bed.
[01:00:09]  And he's never paid for it.
[01:00:10]  Fork it over.
[01:00:11]  That's fighting words right there.
[01:00:13]  I'm glad I'm not in charge of it.
[01:00:14]  I'm thrilled to be on the show with him.
[01:00:16]  There are not shows like this, right?
[01:00:18]  Incentivizing that relationship.
[01:00:21]  Ceasefire, Friday nights on C-SPAN.
[01:00:28]  Washington Journal continues.
[01:00:31]  Welcome back to the program.
[01:00:33]  Joining us to talk about Iran, the Iran nuclear program, and discussions with the United States is Rosemary Kalanik, Middle East Program Director at Defense Priorities and Danielle Pletka, Foreign and Defense Policy Studies Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
[01:00:49]  Ladies, welcome to both of you.
[01:00:51]  Rosemary, I'll start with you.
[01:00:54]  The U.S. and Iran are holding talks today in Geneva.
[01:00:59]  As we speak, what do you think the United States should be trying to achieve?
[01:01:05]  What's the core objective?
[01:01:08]  I mean, I think the core objective, the most important objective for U.S. security is to avoid a war with Iran.
[01:01:14]  Iran is not a country that threatens the United States directly.
[01:01:17]  It's a weak, almost impoverished country at this point.
[01:01:22]  I do think that it's in U.S. interests for Iran not to have a nuclear weapon, just like the U.S. doesn't want any other country to have a nuclear weapon.
[01:01:30]  And so if the United States negotiators can keep the talks to nuclear issues and focus on that and get a strong deal coming out of this that has verification, monitoring by the IAEA to make sure Iran's nuclear program never weaponizes, then I think that's a real win.
[01:01:47]  And I think that should be the main objective here.
[01:01:49]  Danielle, what do you think of that?
[01:01:52]  I disagree slightly.
[01:01:54]  Obviously, we don't want Iran to resume its nuclear weapons program, something that it's already trying very hard to do since the 12-day war of last summer.
[01:02:04]  But our problems with Iran are not restricted solely to their nuclear weapons program.
[01:02:10]  And part of the problem of our historical approach is that we have segregated that off from the other issues.
[01:02:17]  You know, remember, October 7th, 2023, the Hamas attack in Israel and the subsequent war.
[01:02:23]  Hamas is an Iranian-sponsored group.
[01:02:25]  Hezbollah is an Iranian-sponsored group.
[01:02:28]  The Houthis who are attacking Red Sea shipping and raising costs for consumers around the world because of it, they are an Iran-sponsored group.
[01:02:40]  Not to speak of the fact that the Russians are employing Iranian drones in their war against Ukraine very effectively.
[01:02:50]  So those issues, but also, frankly, we should talk about human rights.
[01:02:54]  You know, the Iranians just murdered thousands, possibly tens of thousands of their own people.
[01:03:00]  None of these are issues that we can ignore when we talk to the regime.
[01:03:05]  Rosemary, what do you think about those other issues and bringing in, as Danielle mentioned, the proxies that Iran supports in the area, human rights issues?
[01:03:17]  There's also the ICBM issue of the ability to carry nuclear weapons.
[01:03:24]  Is that realistic that that would be included in these negotiations?
[01:03:31]  I think it's not realistic at this point.
[01:03:33]  And I think that if we overload the negotiations, they may very well fail.
[01:03:38]  And I think what the United States' guiding principle needs to be is: what are we actually willing to fight over?
[01:03:45]  What would we be willing to fight over?
[01:03:47]  Are we willing to fight over Iranian support for Hamas and Hezbollah?
[01:03:53]  I don't think that that is something that the United States should fight a major war over.
[01:03:58]  Iran does not have ICBMs.
[01:04:00]  They do not have missiles that can come anywhere close to reaching the United States.
[01:04:04]  They are years away from developing that capability, according to all intelligence estimates.
[01:04:08]  So there's no ticking time bomb here on those issues.
[01:04:12]  But if the United States can get a nuclear deal, then we could potentially start having better relations that could lead to talks about those issues down the road.
[01:04:21]  I also just want to briefly say Iran's support for these terrorist groups is terrible.
[01:04:25]  It's repugnant.
[01:04:27]  But it also, you know, calling them, I think characterizing them as proxies is somewhat mistaken or somewhat misleading.
[01:04:36]  These groups started, they formed for their own reasons.
[01:04:40]  They have local bases of support.
[01:04:42]  They have local resources, funding, et cetera.
[01:04:44]  And even if Iran stops supporting them, they're not going to disappear overnight.
[01:04:48]  And they don't march to Tehran's drum.
[01:04:50]  So it's a little, you know, overestimating it to say that they're proxies.
[01:04:55]  That said, they're bad groups, and Iran should stop supporting them.
[01:04:58]  I don't think, though, that that's the reason or any reason why the United States should attack Iran.
[01:05:05]  I do want to delve a little bit more into the other groups or the proxies as they're called, but I want to stick with the nuclear program for now.
[01:05:12]  Danielle, Rose asked the question, are we willing to go to war over this?
[01:05:18]  As you know, there is a huge buildup in the Persian Gulf.
[01:05:22]  It's been called the largest U.S. military buildup since the Gulf War in 2003.
[01:05:29]  What's going on as far as, I mean, does it look like war is inevitable given that kind of a buildup?
[01:05:37]  That's a great question.
[01:05:39]  So, you know, it's always hard to answer that kind of a question because, of course, a buildup like that has costs in and of itself, right?
[01:05:48]  We can't pretend that when there's a military buildup of the scale that we see going on right now in the Mediterranean, we're talking about two carrier battle groups, very substantial number of aircraft, and a lot of additional resources, not to speak of the relocation of some of our forces from other areas and diplomatic relocations and everything else.
[01:06:10]  This is not for free, even if a war doesn't happen.
[01:06:14]  So it's the right question.
[01:06:16]  I think the way the administration looks at this, and the president has not been terribly explicit about his calculus, but I think that the way that this administration looks at this is that it wants to persuade the Iranians that the United States is very serious, that in fact, if the Iranians are not willing to make the concessions that the president demands on the nuclear weapons program, that in fact, there is conflict ahead.
[01:06:46]  Now, are these other factors part of it?
[01:06:49]  I would like them to be, but as Rosemary says, you know, by themselves, absent the nuclear problem, they're probably not a sufficient casus belli for the United States.
[01:06:59]  So, you know, I think everything hangs in the balance.
[01:07:02]  We've got talks going on today in Geneva, and hopefully we'll have some more clarity about what's going to happen in the coming hours.
[01:07:12]  If you'd like to join our conversation on Iran, if you've got a question for our guests, Rosemary Kalanik and Danielle Pletka, you can start calling in now.
[01:07:21]  The lines are by party.
[01:07:22]  So Republicans are on 202748-8001.
[01:07:26]  Democrats, 202-748-8000.
[01:07:29]  And Independents, 202748, 8002.
[01:07:32]  Rosemary, you had said that we are years away, or at least the Iranians are years away from a ballistic missile program and being able to deliver a nuclear weapon to the United States.
[01:07:48]  How do we know that?
[01:07:49]  How much transparency do we have into Iran's nuclear program and ballistic missile program?
[01:07:58]  So there are two separate questions here, right?
[01:08:00]  The nuclear question is very different from the ballistic missiles question.
[01:08:03]  We had transparency from Iran in their nuclear program when they were part of the IAEA inspections regime.
[01:08:12]  And they, you know, diligently met with inspectors.
[01:08:15]  Inspectors came in and monitored the facilities.
[01:08:18]  And we knew broadly what Iran was doing, and including how high they were enriching uranium for years until the war last June disrupted that process.
[01:08:29]  And since that war, we have not had IAEA oots on the ground.
[01:08:34]  We've not had an insight into Iranian nuclear activities aside from satellite analysis.
[01:08:40]  And I'm sure the U.S. government has some intelligence analysis going on too.
[01:08:44]  But the consensus that I'm aware of is that Iran has not done anything to restart enrichment.
[01:08:51]  Iran has not rebuilt in any significant way its nuclear program.
[01:08:57]  Largely, I think, because they have been so compromised by intelligence agents from the U.S. and Israel that they know it would be detected if they did, right?
[01:09:06]  So that's what we know about their nuclear program.
[01:09:08]  In terms of their ballistic missiles, we know what we can see, and the intelligence services know what they can see.
[01:09:16]  And U.S. intelligence services in their public reporting has said, you know, the most recent one was 10 years before they can create and deliver any kind of intercontinental ballistic missile.
[01:09:30]  Setting aside the nuclear question, right?
[01:09:32]  Whether you can put a nuclear weapon on a missile is a different technical question.
[01:09:35]  But whether or not they could just build a missile, a military missile, the estimate's 10 years.
[01:09:41]  I've seen some shorter estimates, to be frank, to be honest.
[01:09:43]  Those estimates are three to four years.
[01:09:46]  So it's still, this is not a ticking time bomb.
[01:09:48]  And Rosemary, in order to reach Israel, so it's one thing to cross the ocean to get to the United States.
[01:09:54]  What about a missile that could reach Israel?
[01:09:59]  Iran can build missiles right now that reach Israel, that reach U.S. bases in the Middle East.
[01:10:03]  In fact, our bases are very vulnerable to those missiles.
[01:10:06]  And it's the one, really the only way that Iran has to deter the United States and Israel is with the missile threat.
[01:10:13]  That does not mean that they can put a nuclear weapon on one of those missiles.
[01:10:17]  It also does not mean that they have nuclear weapons.
[01:10:20]  And in fact, there was no evidence before the war last summer that Iran was trying to weaponize its program.
[01:10:27]  They had an enrichment program to create fuel for nuclear weapons, but we had no evidence they were actually trying to build the weapon, which can take another six months to a year.
[01:10:36]  Danielle, your thoughts on that?
[01:10:39]  So I don't agree with Rosemary's assessment of the nature of the program right now, nor do people who, frankly, are much, much greater experts than I am in the technicality of nuclear weapons.
[01:10:51]  So what we saw last summer, it was that the United States and Israel targeted some of the best known sites.
[01:10:59]  And when I talk about the best-known sites, it's Natans, where there was an enrichment cascade, centrifuges, Isfahan, same deal, the Parchin military complex, where we know that over the last 20 or so years, Iran has been engaged in detonation activities, things that are related very closely to not simply the enrichment process, but the detonation process,
[01:11:28]  which is not a peaceful nuclear program.
[01:11:30]  Of course, the IAEA was not satisfied with Iran's cooperation prior to the 12-day war.
[01:11:37]  In fact, the IAEA censured Iran, which is a fairly rare thing to happen at the IAEA.
[01:11:47]  Remember, it operates largely by consensus, and it is, in and of itself, a toothless organization.
[01:11:53]  When it has a real problem, it refers its challenges to the United Nations Security Council, where it's not that easy to obtain any results because of the Russians and the Chinese who are permanent members like we are.
[01:12:08]  And so that's what was happening beforehand.
[01:12:11]  But there were a couple of sites that weren't hit in that war.
[01:12:15]  And the Iranians have been working not just on those, Talegan and Pickaxe Mountains, but also in restoring and in hardening the Parchin site where they're doing weapons activities.
[01:12:30]  And we know that not because Danny Platka has had her little spyglass out, but because David Albright, who is a deeply non-partisan and well-respected expert in Washington, D.C., so not classified information, is reporting to us with his organization.
[01:12:50]  And so what we see is that, in fact, these activities are continuing.
[01:12:55]  In addition, and this was one of the problems of that 12-day war, and particularly when it ended, we know that Iran actually retains very substantial stocks of enriched uranium.
[01:13:08]  Now, can they get to them?
[01:13:09]  Can't they get to them?
[01:13:11]  Were they moved?
[01:13:12]  Almost certainly yes, prior to the conflict.
[01:13:15]  What are they doing with those?
[01:13:17]  We know that they're building a new cascade that they are hoping will be able to withstand any bombing.
[01:13:22]  So all of these activities are ongoing.
[01:13:25]  Now, what Rosemary refers to very correctly is the challenge of what's called miniaturization of a nuclear weapon to put it on a missile.
[01:13:35]  Now, we know that countries have conducted nuclear tests with a view to having nuclear weapons prior to being able to load a nuclear bomb onto a missile, which is difficult.
[01:13:47]  On the other hand, we also know that the Pakistanis, who are very generous in proliferating and sharing, as well as others, do know how to do this.
[01:13:57]  So a big problem.
[01:13:58]  Last factor, the missile question that you asked about, these things go hand in hand.
[01:14:03]  The Iranians have been accelerating, they have been improving, and while they are not on a steady trajectory, they have had very substantial help from what Iran likes to call the axis of resistance.
[01:14:16]  And George W. Bush called the axis of evil, although China was not part of that at the time.
[01:14:21]  But the Chinese and the Russians have been very helpful to Iran.
[01:14:26]  And of course, we know that they know how to build hypersonic missiles, intercontinental ballistic missiles.
[01:14:32]  So, you know, this is not something I downplay.
[01:14:36]  So I want to just please respond to some of that.
[01:14:38]  Yes, but first we're just going to sorry, Rosemary, we're just going to hear from President Trump because he did mention Iran in the State of the Union.

=== Weapons Inspectors in Iraq (15:42) ===

[01:14:46]  So I just want to play that portion and then I'll go to you, Rosemary, okay?
[01:14:51]  But this is some terrible people.
[01:14:55]  They've already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they're working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America.
[01:15:06]  After Midnight Hammer, they were warned to make no future attempts to rebuild their weapons program, in particular nuclear weapons.
[01:15:16]  Yet they continue starting it all over.
[01:15:19]  We wiped it out and they want to start all over again.
[01:15:23]  And are at this moment, again, pursuing their sinister ambitions.
[01:15:28]  We are in negotiations with them.
[01:15:29]  They want to make a deal, but we haven't heard those secret words.
[01:15:33]  We will never have a nuclear weapon.
[01:15:38]  My preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy.
[01:15:59]  But one thing is certain.
[01:16:00]  I will never allow the world's number one sponsor of terror, which they are by far, to have a nuclear weapon.
[01:16:07]  I can't let that happen.
[01:16:14]  Rosemary, your reaction when you heard that?
[01:16:19]  Well, I agree with him.
[01:16:20]  I don't want Iran to get nuclear weapons.
[01:16:23]  I do think that the president is maybe overplaying the threat a little bit, more than a little bit in that clip.
[01:16:31]  But I wanted to talk about the 2003 example, because we've had some shout-outs to that era in terms of the Axis of Evil speech.
[01:16:39]  And David Albright, who was also a weapons expert back when George W. Bush attacked Iraq, thinking that Iran, or I'm sorry, thinking that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons program, which it turned out he did not have any nuclear program at all.
[01:16:54]  And I think that Danielle and I both share this goal of we'd like to see Iran not get a nuclear weapon.
[01:17:01]  The real question here is what is the best way to accomplish that objective?
[01:17:05]  And the two alternatives are the United States does an operation like 2003 Iraq, where we send in 150,000 troops who weren't just there to change the regime, but were there to secure nuclear sites and nuclear components that they believed were there.
[01:17:21]  And that was the force size that the United States thought was necessary for a country that at the time had a population about a third of Iran's today and is about the third of the size of the Iranian land mass, right?
[01:17:33]  That's one way.
[01:17:34]  Boots on the ground that are U.S. soldiers.
[01:17:36]  And I think that would be a terrible mistake.
[01:17:38]  The other way, right, not to mention the fact that when we've put boots on the ground, sometimes stuff escapes anyway, right?
[01:17:44]  Osama bin Laden escaped through the mountains in Afghanistan and something like that could happen in a wartime scenario as well.
[01:17:49]  So putting that aside.
[01:17:52]  The other way is to have boots on the ground that belong to the IAEA who inspect sites and see what's going on.
[01:17:58]  And I think it would be a huge win if Trump can get Iran to let IAEA inspectors back into the country, do their due diligence, see what's going on, et cetera, et cetera.
[01:18:08]  And that's a far better, much more sustainable, reasonable way, and I think ultimately a more effective way of preventing Iranian proliferation than attacking the country.
[01:18:18]  And it doesn't seem, there's no evidence right now that Trump wants to send in 150,000 ground troops, but I think that there is maybe an exaggeration about what the U.S. can do from the air alone, right?
[01:18:30]  We can't do this from the air alone if the goal was to end a nuclear program.
[01:18:34]  You have to deal with boots on the ground.
[01:18:36]  That would be a terrible mistake.
[01:18:37]  So Danielle, respond to that, and then we'll take calls as far as those two options of American boots on the ground or just getting IAEA inspectors into Iran.
[01:18:50]  What do you think?
[01:18:52]  So I think it's I think this is a straw man discussion.
[01:18:56]  You know, there is a world between the invasion of Iraq and sending in a bunch of IAEA inspectors.
[01:19:07]  There was the Operation Midnight Hammer from last summer, which did substantially degrade Iran's nuclear weapons program, but did not eliminate it, or it certainly did not, let's say, did not eliminate the component parts of it which are the critical on the critical path.
[01:19:24]  But I think a lot of damage can be done from the air.
[01:19:26]  But the President said very clearly, no, I prefer diplomacy.
[01:19:31]  I think the problem here is not sort of, you know, whether we're going to do Iraq again because that's the only thing that will work.
[01:19:38]  I don't agree with Rosemary about that.
[01:19:40]  Or nuclear weapons inspectors from the IAEA.
[01:19:44]  There's a middle ground here.
[01:19:46]  I think the biggest problem isn't us.
[01:19:49]  The biggest problem is the Iranian government and their willingness to open up their country and their program in a way that is verifiable.
[01:19:57]  And I know Rosemary will agree with me that verification is the key here.
[01:20:01]  And that we haven't seen from the Tehran regime.
[01:20:05]  Say calls will start in Boston, Massachusetts, line for Democrats.
[01:20:08]  Chris, good morning.
[01:20:10]  Good morning.
[01:20:11]  In 2018, the Egyptians proposed a United Nations resolution making the Middle East a nuclear weapons-free zone.
[01:20:20]  Every Arab country was in favor of it, including Iran.
[01:20:24]  Yet it was vetoed.
[01:20:25]  It was vetoed by the United States because it would have exposed Israel's undeclared nuclear weapons program.
[01:20:32]  Finally, there's a U.S. law called the Symington Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act.
[01:20:38]  And it states that any country that produces or possesses nuclear weapons without having signed the non-proliferation treaty shall not receive United States foreign aid.
[01:20:48]  Israel possesses and produces nuclear weapons.
[01:20:51]  Israel refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
[01:20:55]  Israel is the largest recipient of United States foreign aid.
[01:21:01]  Kind of odd, don't you think?
[01:21:03]  Danielle Plutka.
[01:21:05]  Well, the quarter has a very particular view on Israel, and it's one that I obviously don't agree with, but I would note that India has a nuclear weapons program and has over the years received very substantial assistance and we now sell weapons to India as well.
[01:21:25]  Pakistan has a nuclear weapons program, which and they've obviously tested nuclear weapons.
[01:21:31]  They have received hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. assistance over the years.
[01:21:36]  So Israel is far from isolated.
[01:21:39]  Egypt has introduced resolutions like that over the years.
[01:21:43]  And of course, their intention is not to denude the Iranians of a nuclear weapons capability, but to take it away from the Israelis.
[01:21:53]  If there were a verifiable regional nuclear weapons-free zone, one that I seriously doubt, then I think that's very worth discussing.
[01:22:03]  But of course, there isn't because the Iranians have never come clean about their program.
[01:22:09]  And Iran, which has 90 million people plus to Israel's 10 million, is really the bigger of the problems here.
[01:22:18]  Ali in Lorton, Virginia, Independent Line, you're on the air.
[01:22:23]  Good morning, John.
[01:22:25]  I'm originally from Iraq, witnessed 1990 and 2003 and aftermath.
[01:22:33]  And I have no comment for your guest.
[01:22:36]  Obviously, she didn't touch the main reason for all this discussion.
[01:22:42]  And I will not speak of that.
[01:22:46]  I just want to let the American people which I think was mentioned a few minutes ago.
[01:22:55]  They are ready to take three times the casualties of Iraq, three times refugees of Iraq, and be prepared to solve a problem in a lawless area that extended from Afghanistan to Libya.
[01:23:17]  I grew up under the Iraqi-Iran war.
[01:23:21]  Iran hurt Iraq in over eight years.
[01:23:24]  They were the enemy where I would grow up.
[01:23:27]  Their role in Iraq after 2003 was horrible, and they destroyed and killed the Iraqis in 1000.
[01:23:36]  They are part of the division there, and they destroyed the economy.
[01:23:42]  I hate them.
[01:23:43]  But removing the regime will not bring anything good to the region, except for one employer, of course.
[01:23:52]  And thank you.
[01:23:55]  Danielle, I'll let you take that one.
[01:24:00]  I don't really know what to say.
[01:24:03]  I wonder why the caller is in the United States and not in Iraq.
[01:24:06]  But I don't think there's any proposition that the United States put boots on the ground.
[01:24:10]  The president has never suggested that we would do such a thing.
[01:24:14]  And I think we also have a pretty strong sense about what Iranian capabilities are, vis-a-vis their neighbors and vis-a-vis us in terms of conventional warfare.
[01:24:25]  So I'm not profoundly concerned.
[01:24:29]  The one question that I think is important that he raises is what would happen if the Iranian regime fell?
[01:24:37]  And this is really an area where I think people are right to raise questions.
[01:24:41]  What is the Trump administration thinking about this?
[01:24:44]  If in fact they're embracing a decapitation strategy, if Iran does not come to terms on the nuclear weapons program, what's next?
[01:24:53]  I think we absolutely learned from the Iraq war that what you want is you want to be sure of what's next.
[01:25:00]  That doesn't mean it should stop us at every step, but it does mean that we should have some planning in place, some thinking in place about a transition if in fact those are our intentions.
[01:25:12]  You're saying I don't know what the answer to that is.
[01:25:14]  Do you think it should be our intention for regime change?
[01:25:19]  I firmly believe that since the 1979 revolution in Iran that overthrew the Shah, that Iran has been one of the most malign forces, not simply in the Middle East, but in the world, responsible until 9-11 for the death of more Americans, involved in a nuclear weapons program, involved in a ballistic missile program, a shocking human rights abuser.
[01:25:47]  I would love to see them gone.
[01:25:50]  But I do want to understand a little bit about how we're thinking about what's next.
[01:25:55]  That's my mind too.
[01:25:56]  Let's talk to John in Arlington, Virginia.
[01:25:58]  Republican, go ahead, John.
[01:26:01]  Yes, hi.
[01:26:01]  Good morning.
[01:26:02]  I'd just like to note that we were referencing 2003 and just going back to the Iraq invasion and what led up to that.
[01:26:08]  Well, I mean, there were inspectors going into Iraq, going all the way back to the Clinton administration, but what was the end result of that?
[01:26:15]  An invasion in 2003.
[01:26:17]  And I fear that we're in the same path here where we're discussing about negotiating with Iran about letting inspectors in.
[01:26:24]  But what will happen eventually when the inspectors find some irregularities and Iran decides, well, we're going to just kick you out.
[01:26:30]  We're back to where we started.
[01:26:32]  So this whole aspect of this being about the nuclear program, allowing inspections in, really, I don't see going anywhere.
[01:26:39]  And I think if we're looking at solutions, we'll have to look elsewhere.
[01:26:43]  Rosemary Kalanick.
[01:26:45]  Yeah, thank you.
[01:26:46]  Senator, this is a hugely important point.
[01:26:49]  But I think it cuts in the other direction than the caller's interpretation of it, right?
[01:26:53]  And it goes back to things that we were just speaking about with regime change, right?
[01:26:57]  So Iran is definitely under pressure from the United States.
[01:27:02]  I think the U.S. threat to attack Iran is highly, highly credible, right?
[01:27:07]  But I worry that the administration has gone overboard in trying to make its threat so credible that they've convinced Iran that no matter what they do, the United States is going to attack them anyway.
[01:27:18]  Right?
[01:27:18]  That's what happened in 2003.
[01:27:20]  2003, there were no weapons inspectors in Iraq, at least, you know, not the couple of years right before it.
[01:27:26]  Bush demanded that Iraq let in weapons inspectors.
[01:27:29]  Iraq did let in weapons inspectors.
[01:27:31]  And then the United States attacked before the inspectors finished the job, which is how we ended up with the war against a country that did not, in fact, have a nuclear weapons program.
[01:27:39]  Right.
[01:27:40]  Now, had the inspectors finished the job, maybe we could have avoided that conflict, right?
[01:27:46]  But they didn't.
[01:27:47]  And the United States attacked anyway.
[01:27:50]  And so he needs to, if he really wants to have a nuclear deal, and I believe he does, right?
[01:27:55]  He needs to pair the credible threat of force with a credible assurance that if Iran cooperates, we're not going to attack them anyway.
[01:28:02]  And so all of these musings about regime change is totally contradictory to that goal because it convinces Iran, actually, from Iran's perspective, that we're not interested in a nuclear deal, that we have it out for them, and that we're going to get them no matter what.
[01:28:16]  And that's not conducive to negotiations where they're going to make concessions.
[01:28:21]  So those two things are in strong tension with one another.
[01:28:24]  So Rosemary, continue that scenario for us.
[01:28:27]  If the United States were to attack, what would the response of the Iranian regime be?
[01:28:35]  Nobody knows, but Iran has said that they would try to fight a war of attrition against the United States, right?
[01:28:41]  That they would use their missile capabilities to attack U.S. bases in the region.
[01:28:45]  And there are some 40,000 U.S. troops in the region in bases all across the place that are highly vulnerable to these missiles, right?
[01:28:53]  Now, Iran can't defeat the United States.
[01:28:56]  Iran is a much, much weaker country than we are.
[01:28:59]  Their strategy that they're threatening is to raise the cost to the United States so that we'll let go.
[01:29:05]  It's a porcupine strategy, right?
[01:29:08]  They can't defeat the bear, but they're hoping that if the bear munches on the porcupine, it'll hurt enough that the bear stops, right?
[01:29:15]  That's what they've threatened to do.
[01:29:16]  Now, whether that's a bluff or not, I don't know.
[01:29:19]  Some people think it's a bluff and that the U.S. could strike Iran, have a reset to the negotiations where we go back to the negotiating table with a stronger hand.
[01:29:27]  But I'm not convinced that that's the case.
[01:29:29]  I do believe that this regime is desperate.
[01:29:32]  They're extremely weak.
[01:29:33]  They're at the weakest point in their country's history, frankly.
[01:29:38]  And I do believe that they would respond in a painful way for the United States.
[01:29:43]  And that's what's really on the line here.
[01:29:45]  Well, Danielle, if talks were to fail, do you think the United States should strike militarily?
[01:29:52]  And what do you think the response of the regime would be?
[01:29:57]  I think the United States should strike militarily for sure.
[01:30:01]  I hope I've made that clear.
[01:30:03]  I don't think that the Iranians are ever going to come clean about their program.
[01:30:07]  I think Rosemary makes an important point, which is that the Iranian government does sense that it's in a lose-lose position and potentially believes that it should hunker down and just outlast whatever it is the United States has coming.
[01:30:25]  And so that is a real complexity here.

=== Iran's Strategic Position (14:37) ===

[01:30:29]  And I don't want to dismiss what she says because I think it should be part of how we think about this.
[01:30:34]  But in terms of what the Iranians can do in retaliation, no, I'm not terribly concerned.
[01:30:42]  One thing that we will have done in building up in the region is also ensure that where we have troops, we are well protected.
[01:30:52]  The Iranians have threatened behind the scenes, and people haven't seen that much of this, but the Iranians have been making threats over the last two months that they are going to hit Saudi Arabia, that they're going to hit the United Arab Emirates, that they're going to hit Israel.
[01:31:07]  And they've tried to use all three countries to leverage the United States not to strike them.
[01:31:13]  But I think their power and their potential there is very limited.
[01:31:17]  We saw that during the 12-day war.
[01:31:20]  Larry, is going to respond to that briefly?
[01:31:23]  Yes, go ahead.
[01:31:24]  Very briefly.
[01:31:25]  I'll just say, you know, it's a difficult problem for the United States and for Israel because we have missile defenses that can deal with Iranian missiles, but it's much cheaper for them to build a missile and much faster than for us to build an interceptor, which is way more expensive and we're running low on, right?
[01:31:42]  And so that's sort of ultimately the question, right?
[01:31:44]  Are we going to fight a war where they're lobbing missiles at us and we have enough interceptors to defeat those missiles?
[01:31:51]  That to me is the bigger question.
[01:31:53]  That cost exchange problem is one that doesn't help the United States in this scenario.
[01:31:58]  Let's hear from Larry, Democrat in Cleveland, Ohio.
[01:32:00]  Good morning.
[01:32:02]  Yes, I would like to know when Obama was in office and the Iranians agreed to the deal that they made, why did Trump get in office and disregard that agreement?
[01:32:20]  Rosemary.
[01:32:22]  It's a great question, and I don't have an answer to it.
[01:32:25]  I think it was a mistake, frankly.
[01:32:28]  The Trump administration, so part of the agreement was that members of the U.S. administration had to recertify every six months that Iran was meeting its obligations under the deal.
[01:32:38]  And people in the Trump administration did in fact do that.
[01:32:40]  The State Department did in fact certify that Iran was meeting its obligations under the deal.
[01:32:46]  And Iran did not start enriching beyond the limits of the JCPOA for a full year after the United States pulled out of the deal.
[01:32:54]  So I do think that was a mistake on the U.S. part.
[01:32:57]  Danielle, I take it you do not agree with that.
[01:33:00]  I don't.
[01:33:01]  And, you know, I think there's a very reasonable debate to be had.
[01:33:06]  And so I understand Rosemary and the Kohler's perspective.
[01:33:09]  What I would just say is that the problem with the JCPOA, which is the Iran nuclear deal from the Obama administration 2015 that the Kohler was referring to, the problem with that deal was that while it certainly obtained some limitations on the Iranian nuclear weapons program, at the end of the day, the strictures on everything else and the sunsets, the provisions of the JCPOA that expired,
[01:33:39]  really put Iran in a position where they could wait out the agreement and then resume having done all of this clandestine work beforehand and continued with their conventional program and continued with their missile program and continued with their support for terrorism and done so, by the way, with almost no serious sanctions on them by the United States or Europe.
[01:34:06]  And that cash infusion was hugely meaningful and hugely dangerous.
[01:34:10]  So no, I thought the JCPOA was a bad deal.
[01:34:13]  On the Republican line, Troy, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, good morning.
[01:34:17]  You're on with Rosemary Kalanek and Danielle Pletka.
[01:34:21]  Good morning, Can.
[01:34:23]  Oh, this topic is really great.
[01:34:26]  Historically, Iran, I think they got 3 million soldiers, whereas Iraq was in a totally different situation.
[01:34:36]  Also, Venezuela, I believe that China and Russia are probably supplying them the same way we did with Ukraine, trying to set us up.
[01:34:51]  Israel was very able to go in and do what it did because they had Hawk missiles.
[01:34:56]  They're not using the Soviet system.
[01:34:58]  They're using an old American Hawk missile system, which was knocked off of, I guess, the satellite system.
[01:35:04]  So I guess that's why they were so successful.
[01:35:07]  But now that I've read that the Chinese have sent up a satellite and also they're going to try to set us up like they did India when they attacked Pakistan.
[01:35:16]  And hopefully we're ready for that.
[01:35:19]  And also the Iranian ballistic missiles can go all the way into southern Europe to hit our bases in Turkey and also in the Sinai in Egypt.
[01:35:31]  So I'm just hoping that Trump, like he said, he's going to try to get a diplomatic solution and not go with the war effort because I believe that a lot of politicians and people that so-called advisors haven't been aware of that.
[01:35:49]  All right, Rosemary Kalanik, your thoughts?
[01:35:52]  Yeah.
[01:35:53]  So I think there's an important point here, which is that Iran's missiles are actually a sign of weakness, not strength, right?
[01:36:00]  Iran is a weak country.
[01:36:04]  They don't have resources.
[01:36:05]  They've been subjected to decades of sanctions, right?
[01:36:07]  They have a missile strategy that looks like offense, but its goal is deterrence, right?
[01:36:14]  Iran can't build missile interceptors.
[01:36:16]  They don't have FAD systems and Patriots and all this other kind of stuff.
[01:36:19]  They can't defend themselves from the United States and Israel.
[01:36:23]  Israel and the United States can attack Iranian airspace and move about probably with impunity immediately, right?
[01:36:29]  And Iran doesn't even have an air force.
[01:36:31]  People call it a flying museum.
[01:36:33]  The more apt description is a non-flying museum because they didn't even send the Air Force out during the 12-day war because they knew it would be demolished, right?
[01:36:41]  So Iran's only card is to have these missiles that can hit bases in the region, right?
[01:36:47]  And they can also hit Southeastern Europe.
[01:36:49]  That's true, right?
[01:36:49]  That is true.
[01:36:50]  But they don't have to hit Turkey to hit U.S. troops in the region.
[01:36:53]  But the reason they have those missiles is to deter the United States and Israel.
[01:36:57]  And Iran has never fired its missiles except in retaliation against the United States or Israel.
[01:37:03]  Iran has never started a war with another country.
[01:37:06]  They've been attacked by Saddam Hussein.
[01:37:08]  They were attacked by the U.S. and Israel.
[01:37:10]  But they have been deterred from using their missiles.
[01:37:13]  Their missiles look scary to us, but it's their only means of deterring us.
[01:37:19]  Danielle, do you agree that deterrence is working?
[01:37:23]  I don't agree with a lot of that.
[01:37:26]  First of all, the Iranians have used their missiles in offense.
[01:37:30]  They attacked Israel before Israel struck Iran.
[01:37:35]  They have attacked Saudi Arabia.
[01:37:37]  They hit the Abkhaz terminal, the oil refining terminal in Trump's first term.
[01:37:43]  They have attacked and killed civilians in the United Arab Emirates.
[01:37:47]  Now, we can downplay these because these weren't mass casualty attacks.
[01:37:52]  But the idea that Iran is a purely defensive, cowering, weak power in the region really discounts the panoply of assets that it has.
[01:38:06]  And that's why I underscored the fact that until 9-11, Iraq was responsible for more American deaths than any group in the modern era.
[01:38:16]  Iran, did I say Iraq?
[01:38:17]  Forgive me.
[01:38:19]  And, you know, it's very important to understand that, yes, Iran is nothing compared to us.
[01:38:26]  On the other hand, the damage they can do, the disruption that they've brought to the region, and what their terrorist groups, And I agree with Rosemary's caveat that these terrorist groups have some independent agencies, but we should not lie to ourselves.
[01:38:45]  They rely on Iran for funding, they rely on Iran for weaponry, they rely on Iran for training, and they rely on Iran for intelligence.
[01:38:53]  So the idea that they are somehow, you know, independent actors is, I think, a little misleading.
[01:39:00]  So the idea that Iran is somehow this weak, cowering state in the region and posing no threat to anybody anywhere seems to me to be a little bit naive.
[01:39:13]  John Democrat, Los Angeles, California, you're on the air.
[01:39:18]  Good morning.
[01:39:18]  Thank you for taking my call.
[01:39:20]  A lot of what I wanted to say were already mentioned by other callers and the two guest speakers that you have.
[01:39:28]  But two important things.
[01:39:29]  One is that in President Trump's State of the Union address, for the first time, he did not mention that Iran is a threat to Israel.
[01:39:39]  He mentioned that Iran's ballistic missiles can reach Europe and eventually the United States.
[01:39:44]  So this is the first time that the president since Jimmy Carter is treating Iran as an enemy of the direct enemy of the United States, not just based on Israel.
[01:39:55]  The second thing is that we have almost a trillion dollar budget for the Pentagon.
[01:40:01]  We have one of the world's largest militaries, and we are afraid of attacking a country like Iran.
[01:40:09]  We don't want to send boots on the ground because it might kill American soldiers, which won't look good for the midterm elections.
[01:40:17]  And we are basing this threat of Iran of what might happen during the midterm elections, whereas not the national security of the United States.
[01:40:28]  And a lot of this is because of the mistakes that happened in Iraq and Afghanistan that has made Pentagon officials and the president of the United States wary of sending boots to the ground where this is necessary.
[01:40:40]  This is why we have a military.
[01:40:42]  Thank you.
[01:40:44]  Who'd like to take that?
[01:40:47]  I'd be happy to, if that's okay.
[01:40:51]  Yeah, so I think the caller's point about politics and the midterm elections is really important.
[01:40:58]  And, you know, I don't think that any of this should be indexed to what's going to happen in November, right?
[01:41:03]  This has to be about U.S. national security first and foremost.
[01:41:07]  But the point I would make is that there is not a ticking time bomb here.
[01:41:12]  There is time for the president to go to Congress and get a war powers resolution that, you know, basically get a resolution to attack Iran if that's what the president wants to do, right?
[01:41:24]  I think that he needs to make the case to the American people.
[01:41:26]  And I do think that members of Congress should be put on the record and be accountable for their vote one way or the other on whether or not the United States should attack Iran.
[01:41:37]  And, you know, the reason that we have these resolutions or the reason that we have divided government, not divide, well, checks and balances is to prevent the U.S. from hastily making bad decisions to have a debate because the belief is that we get better policy outcomes because of that.
[01:41:53]  It's not just for the sake of process.
[01:41:56]  It's because it's important that our leaders actually come out and say what they stand for so that the American people know what's going on.
[01:42:05]  And so I would really like to see that process happen.
[01:42:08]  Danielle, I want you to respond to the question that Rosemary brings up about the sense of urgency and that this is not a ticking time bomb.
[01:42:17]  Barb in Illinois sent us a text asking if the Iranian missile capability poses more of a threat in the region at this time.
[01:42:25]  What do you say to that?
[01:42:28]  I agree with a lot of what Rosemary said in principle.
[01:42:31]  You know, one of the things that I think should be much more distressing to the American people is, frankly, the supine behavior of the U.S. Congress.
[01:42:42]  And I say that as a bipartisan slam, because when Joe Biden was president, the Democrats in Congress were supine.
[01:42:50]  When Barack Obama was president, the Democrats in Congress were supine.
[01:42:54]  And similarly, the Republicans in Congress have frankly not exercised the power of the legislative branch in ways that they should.
[01:43:03]  Now, the discussion about whether there should be an authorization for use of military force is one that I think is a little bit misunderstood.
[01:43:13]  But that being said, I could not believe that in the four years of his presidency, Joe Biden never came out, stood up, and made a major speech, gave a major address on the question of Ukraine.
[01:43:28]  And similarly, I would very much like to see Donald Trump stand up or sit at the desk in the Oval Office and make a speech about the necessity of action on Iran.
[01:43:43]  In terms of urgency, I want to be brief because I know you have callers, but in terms of urgency, again, the problem here is not the United States.
[01:43:53]  The problem here is Iran.
[01:43:56]  If Iran were willing to come to the table, were willing to open its doors fully, not plague the games that it has played for the last three decades, then that would be great.
[01:44:09]  The reality is that they have not been willing to give that, notwithstanding several meetings that they've had with Trump's envoys, and they are the problem, not us.
[01:44:22]  On the Independent Line in New York, Frank, good morning.
[01:44:26]  Good morning.
[01:44:28]  I guess my question is to Danielle.
[01:44:33]  You know, Trump obviously campaigned on not being an interventionist in foreign affairs anymore.
[01:44:41]  And of course, he's doing exactly the opposite now with Venezuela and Greenland and now Iran.
[01:44:46]  And I just have to wonder how much of this strongman approach he's taking, it has to do with politics.
[01:44:58]  Other Vaquellers have made that accusation as well.
[01:45:04]  And so that's one question.

=== Strongman Approach Politics (04:36) ===

[01:45:06]  How much of all of this is due to his wanting to distract from all of the other negative things that are happening about him and his poll ratings and all like that?
[01:45:17]  So actually, I'd like an answer from both women.
[01:45:20]  How much of this Iran issue right now?
[01:45:23]  Why is this suddenly on the front table and everything else is being pushed back?
[01:45:28]  It seems pretty obvious to me.
[01:45:29]  All right, Danielle, go ahead first.
[01:45:31]  So, you know, look, I think it's a very interesting question.
[01:45:37]  And if, in fact, you sort of extrapolated directly from the president's campaign appearances and his criticism of his predecessor, you would think that he would not be terribly engaged on this question of national security.
[01:45:53]  And the reality is that he is.
[01:45:56]  And one of the things that has struck me forcibly about the president's interest, I don't think, by the way, to the caller's direct question, I really don't think this is a wag the dog thing for Donald Trump.
[01:46:10]  I agree that one could suspect that, but I don't think that's what's at play here.
[01:46:18]  One of the things that people don't appreciate about Donald Trump is that he has a genuine desire to stop seeing the killing of innocent people.
[01:46:30]  And he says this about the Russia-Ukraine war.
[01:46:33]  He says this about, you know, he said this about the Iranian people when they were attacked and murdered by their regime.
[01:46:41]  This is something that's very near and dear to his heart.
[01:46:45]  And the funniest thing about this is if you look at polling, and I know that your callers are interested in this kind of thing, if you look at polling of Republicans, what you see is that there is more support among self-identified so-called MAGA Republicans for the president's robust, strong global role than there is among just self-identified Republicans, which I think is surprising.
[01:47:12]  And it's well over 60%, in some cases over 70% on the question of Iran.
[01:47:18]  Let Rosemary have a chance.
[01:47:19]  Go ahead, Rosemary.
[01:47:21]  Thank you.
[01:47:22]  I would just say, you know, I don't know what's behind the timing of this.
[01:47:25]  I would like to think that it's not a cynical ploy like what the caller suggested, though I also agree.
[01:47:31]  Raising the question is natural to do.
[01:47:34]  But I do think it highlights the point that this is a war of choice.
[01:47:37]  This is a confrontation of choice.
[01:47:39]  There was not some external issue that forced the United States to do this now.
[01:47:45]  And we have time to pursue diplomatic options.
[01:47:49]  And I really hope that the talks in Geneva today produce a positive outcome, or at least keep us going on a positive trajectory.
[01:47:57]  So we are almost out of time, but I just want to end with a question to both of you.
[01:48:01]  If you could be brief.
[01:48:03]  What is the biggest misconception right now in Washington about Iran?
[01:48:07]  And Rosemary, you can go first.
[01:48:11]  I think the biggest misconception is that Iran is out to get the United States.
[01:48:15]  I don't actually think Iran is out to get the United States.
[01:48:17]  I think Iran is interested in self-preservation.
[01:48:20]  I think Iran thinks the United States is out to get them.
[01:48:23]  And I worry that they might be right about that.
[01:48:26]  Iran is not a nice country.
[01:48:28]  It's not a nice regime.
[01:48:29]  The people are a different story.
[01:48:30]  It's not a nice regime.
[01:48:32]  But it's a deterrible regime.
[01:48:33]  It can't threaten the United States directly.
[01:48:35]  It wouldn't be able to do that for years.
[01:48:38]  And I think there's way too much threat inflation going on in Washington right now.
[01:48:43]  Danielle, last word.
[01:48:45]  I try and believe foreign leaders when they call us the great Satan, when they started their regime by taking our entire embassy hostage and holding them for 444 days in 1979.
[01:49:01]  Things have pretty much gone downhill from there over the last 47 years.
[01:49:05]  I also want to make the very important point that we not forget how this began.
[01:49:11]  The Iranian people came out into the streets to protest the regime's mismanagement, its violation of law, its treatment of its own people.
[01:49:23]  And in response, this regime murdered possibly up to 30,000 people in days.
[01:49:31]  That's not something we should be forgetting about.
[01:49:33]  All right, that's Danielle Pletka, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and also Rosemary Kalanik, Middle East Program Director at Defense Priorities.

=== Go-Go Music in D.C. (03:27) ===

[01:49:43]  Ladies, thanks so much for joining us today.
[01:49:46]  Thank you.
[01:49:46]  Thank you.
[01:49:47]  Later on the program, more of your calls.
[01:49:49]  But up first, Tax Foundation senior economist Alex Duranti will discuss what's next after the Supreme Court ruling that struck down President Trump's emergency tariffs.
[01:49:59]  We'll be right back.
[01:50:08]  C-SPAN, official media partner of America 250, commemorating 250 years of American democracy.
[01:50:15]  America 250 is traveling the country to honor the voices that define our nation.
[01:50:19]  Stories of identity, service, and community.
[01:50:22]  Here's one of them.
[01:50:25]  Coming from a religious black background, my mom always told us, put God first, whatever you do, and he'll direct your path.
[01:50:32]  We had five songs in the top ten.
[01:50:35]  Show some love for my man Sugar Bear.
[01:50:37]  And that's what's going on now.
[01:50:39]  That's why I'm here today.
[01:50:40]  Let's do this.
[01:50:42]  Let's do this.
[01:51:00]  Go-go music is the sound of Washington, D.C. Period.
[01:51:09]  When you go to New York, you expect to hear a lot of hip-hop and rap.
[01:51:13]  You go to New Orleans, you're going to hear a lot of jazz.
[01:51:16]  So when you come to Washington, D.C., or the DMV, as we call it, you're going to hear a lot of Go-Go music.
[01:51:27]  This is our home.
[01:51:28]  This is our capital.
[01:51:29]  It's homegrown in Washington, D.C.
[01:51:31]  It's a party of great party source of music.
[01:51:36]  Call and response.
[01:51:38]  You automatically become a part of it, but you got to see it live.
[01:51:42]  Hearing a recorded version of a Go-Go song, it don't really do nothing for you.
[01:51:46]  But if you see it live, then you can automatically embrace it.
[01:51:50]  Because Go-Go music is a live field.
[01:51:53]  You're right there with it.
[01:51:54]  You're right there with it.
[01:51:55]  And you can't stay still.
[01:51:59]  Especially when I look around the world by me traveling so many places.
[01:52:02]  I can see that living in America has been a blessing to me.
[01:52:07]  People living in poverty, people are poor.
[01:52:09]  People don't have water.
[01:52:11]  They don't have clothes.
[01:52:12]  They don't have food and shelter.
[01:52:14]  I'm free.
[01:52:14]  So it means a lot to me.
[01:52:17]  Whatever your dream is, go get it.
[01:52:20]  Nobody can stop you but you.
[01:52:22]  Believe in yourself, apply yourself, and be the best you can be.
[01:52:26]  This is Sugar Bear.
[01:52:28]  This is our American story.
[01:52:48]  Get C-SPAN wherever you are with C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app that puts you at the center of democracy, live and on demand.
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=== President's Tariff Authority (15:14) ===

[01:53:10]  Catch the latest episodes of Washington Journal.
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[01:53:23]  Download it for free today.
[01:53:25]  C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered.
[01:53:31]  Washington Journal continues.
[01:53:35]  Joining us now to talk about tariffs and the Supreme Court decision striking down those emergency tariffs is Alex Duranti, Tax Foundation senior economist.
[01:53:45]  Alex, welcome to the program.
[01:53:46]  Thanks for having me.
[01:53:48]  Before we talk about the Supreme Court decision and tariffs, can you just tell us a little bit about your organization and the mission?
[01:53:53]  Sure.
[01:53:54]  So Tax Foundation's a 501c3 nonpartisan nonprofit organization that's focused on promoting sound pro-growth tax policy.
[01:54:02]  We think taxes work best when they're stable, transparent, and neutral.
[01:54:06]  And we see the president's tariff policies is very much working against those principles.
[01:54:12]  Well, last week, as you know, the Supreme Court did strike down the, they were called the AIPA tariffs.
[01:54:18]  Can you explain exactly what the court decided and what impact you think that that is going to have?
[01:54:25]  Right.
[01:54:25]  So the AIPA tariffs are the president's emergency powers.
[01:54:28]  And the Supreme Court ruled that under his emergency powers, he does not have the ability to impose tariffs because tariffs are taxes and the taxing power is reserved for Congress.
[01:54:42]  So the tariffs were struck down last Friday in a 6-3 decision, and now it appears the president is pursuing other authorities to try to resurrect his tariff regime.
[01:54:53]  All right, so let's talk about those other authorities because he did mention this is CNBC saying that Trump to hike global tariffs to 15% from 10% effective immediately.
[01:55:08]  We'll just put on the screen some of the kind of the authorities that the president is citing.
[01:55:14]  So one is Section 122 places a global tariff of up to 15%, but only for 150 days, so about five months.
[01:55:24]  Explain that.
[01:55:25]  Yeah, so just a little clarification.
[01:55:26]  So although the president announced on social media that the tariff would be 15%, the tariff that's in effect under Section 122 is actually 10% per the executive order that he issued.
[01:55:38]  It's likely that he will update that to the maximum rate of 15%.
[01:55:43]  But right now, the tariff that is in effect is 10%.
[01:55:45]  And Section 122 allows the President to impose tariffs to address a balance of payments deficits.
[01:55:53]  This is something itself that's sort of a relic of the gold standard era.
[01:55:59]  We don't have a balance of payments deficit.
[01:56:01]  We have trade deficits.
[01:56:03]  Those two things are conceptually distinct.
[01:56:06]  What's actually interesting about that is even in his attorney's own brief when they were arguing in front of the Supreme Court, they actually argued, or rather in their brief, they noted that both those concepts were conceptually distinct and that they did not see the Section 122 authorities as being responsive to what the President was trying to do.
[01:56:27]  But nonetheless, that is what the President is pursuing.
[01:56:31]  And it's very likely, I think, that we will see some legal challenges to Section 122.
[01:56:36]  So this is across the board, but we don't have a trade deficit with every country.
[01:56:41]  Correct, correct.
[01:56:42]  So it is across the board.
[01:56:43]  There are a lot of exemptions that have been issued, which are very similar to the IEPA exemptions that were put in place.
[01:56:52]  But as I said, I think that the tariff itself is likely to undergo its own set of legal challenges.
[01:57:01]  I mean, Section 122, since it was signed into law in the early 1970s, has actually never been invoked.
[01:57:07]  And again, it was designed for a different era.
[01:57:11]  So there really is no precedent for even using that particular authority to impose this kind of tariff.
[01:57:17]  So what happens after 150 days?
[01:57:19]  They just go away?
[01:57:20]  Well, that is a great question.
[01:57:21]  So in the executive order, it does say that the tariffs are scheduled to expire near the end of July.
[01:57:27]  And there actually is a little bit of an uncertain legal question on this topic in terms of how much time has to elapse between when the tariff expires so that the president can perhaps try to reimpose them again.
[01:57:41]  So there is sort of an open legal question as to what exactly happens after those 150 days.
[01:57:47]  Can a certain amount of time go by and then he reimposes them?
[01:57:50]  I think that right now is a little unclear.
[01:57:53]  We've got a question for our guest, Alex Duranti of the Tax Foundation on tariffs.
[01:57:58]  You can give us a call now.
[01:58:00]  Lines are biparty.
[01:58:01]  Republicans are on 202-748-8001.
[01:58:03]  Democrats 202-748-8000.
[01:58:06]  And Independents 202-748-8002.
[01:58:10]  Alex, I want to play you a portion of the State of the Union where the President talks about tariffs.
[01:58:17]  So despite the disappointing ruling, these powerful countries saving, it's saving our country the kind of money we're taking in.
[01:58:26]  Peace protecting many of the wars I settled was because of the threat of tariffs.
[01:58:31]  I wouldn't have been able to settle them without.
[01:58:34]  We'll remain in place under fully approved and tested alternative legal statutes.
[01:58:40]  And they have been tested for a long time.
[01:58:42]  They're a little more complex, but they're actually probably better, leading to a solution that will be even stronger than before.
[01:58:51]  Congressional action will not be necessary.
[01:58:54]  It's already time-tested and approved.
[01:58:57]  And as time goes by, I believe the tariffs paid for by foreign countries will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern day system of income tax, taking a great financial burden off the people that I love.
[01:59:13]  So a lot there to unpack.
[01:59:15]  One is congressional action will not be necessary, which is kind of weird to say in front of Congress, but go ahead.
[01:59:23]  Well, again, the Supreme Court ruled that tariffs are taxes, taxing power lies with Congress.
[01:59:32]  Now, of course, having said that, I mean, the President does have, under certain authorities that have been delegated to him by Congress, he does have the ability to impose tariffs as it relates to those authorities.
[01:59:43]  And in addition to Section 122, that includes Section 232, which targets various kinds of products, the President has actually already imposed tariffs under that set of authorities.
[01:59:54]  There's also Section 301, which allows the President to impose tariffs to target discriminatory trade practices by certain countries.
[02:00:02]  He imposed 301s against China in his first term.
[02:00:07]  So there are other authorities the president has to impose tariffs.
[02:00:11]  And even though those statutes themselves are quite broad, but they're not boundless.
[02:00:18]  He also said tariffs are paid by foreign countries.
[02:00:22]  That is tariffs are paid by the importer at the point of importation.
[02:00:27]  Correct.
[02:00:28]  So the president is just simply mistaken when he asserts that they're paid by foreigners.
[02:00:32]  There's been a lot of empirical studies on this from academics, different banks, other private industry groups.
[02:00:40]  And when you look at the evidence, what it shows is that the U.S. importer is bearing at a minimum 90% of the tariffs.
[02:00:49]  It's only a very small share that is potentially falling on foreigners.
[02:00:55]  And the truth of this is that you actually don't even really need to do any kind of fancy math that economists are accustomed to doing to kind of figure this out.
[02:01:04]  If you actually just look at the import prices that are reported, the import prices that are reported by the government show the pre-tariff import price.
[02:01:13]  And if it was the case that the foreigners were actually bearing the costs of the tariffs.
[02:01:17]  By lowering the importance of the you would see the import prices fall.
[02:01:22]  And you're actually not seeing that.
[02:01:23]  In fact, they've been fairly stable.
[02:01:24]  And even for some goods, they've actually risen slightly.
[02:01:27]  He also mentioned that the tariff revenue could replace income taxes.
[02:01:33]  I mean, this is another situation where the math just doesn't quite work.
[02:01:38]  So if you look, so you look at the tariff base of imports, we have about $3 trillion in goods imports.
[02:01:45]  And then under our current intax system, raise about $2.2 trillion in revenue.
[02:01:51]  So at first glance, you might think, oh, we could just impose a very high rate on that base of imports.
[02:01:58]  In this case, it would have to be around 73%.
[02:02:01]  And then we could collect the state amount of revenue.
[02:02:04]  The problem is that if you impose a tariff that's that high, you are going to depress imports substantially and not collect as much revenue as you would with a lower rate.
[02:02:15]  And of course, that's sort of I think I think tariffs themselves, I mean, they're not designed to raise revenue, right?
[02:02:22]  They're designed to depress imports.
[02:02:25]  And it's the case that when the rates get prohibitively high, you're just going to be bringing in less revenue.
[02:02:31]  So it's really not a very real, it's really not a realistic proposal.
[02:02:36]  And also I would add to that, I mean, at the time that tariffs did raise a substantial amount of revenue for the government, government spending was at 2% of GDP in the 19th century.
[02:02:46]  Now we're close to 27%.
[02:02:49]  So how much money did those tariffs bring in?
[02:02:52]  Just the emergency ones that got struck down.
[02:02:56]  Yeah, so the ones that got struck down, we had estimated that over the next decade, so the 10-year window, they would have brought in $1.4 trillion.
[02:03:06]  For 2025, I don't have the numbers for January, but it's about $260 billion in revenue that needs to be refunded.
[02:03:17]  All right.
[02:03:18]  Let's talk to you said refunded.
[02:03:21]  We'll talk about that.
[02:03:22]  But let's talk first to Ed in Danbury, Connecticut, Republican line.
[02:03:26]  Good morning.
[02:03:28]  Good morning.
[02:03:28]  Yeah, I think tariffs are vital to the economic prosperity of the country.
[02:03:34]  Corporations are transnational, so they'll kind of take advantage of whatever other countries are offering to maximize their profits.
[02:03:43]  For example, Secretary Yellen worked very hard to get corporate tax rates uniform across the countries of the world because they were lowering their tax rates in order to build their economies and take basically production away from our country.
[02:04:01]  A tariff could be targeted, could address that issue immediately.
[02:04:06]  Another issue is countries play with their exchange rates.
[02:04:09]  You mentioned that you could see it in the prices, but like China reduced their exchange rate in order to continue to export to our country.
[02:04:19]  Via tariffs, we could negate that.
[02:04:22]  And I think it was a nifty way for the country to repatriate some of the hundreds of millions of dollars that China had in reserve, as opposed to kind of entering the exchange rate ourselves or using the bully pool to offset that.
[02:04:37]  I also think that in international trade, there's a structural issue and that the countries of the world, they don't want so much U.S. goods, they want the U.S. dollar.
[02:04:46]  Because the U.S. dollar can be used to buy oil anywhere, so that there's no real incentive for them to return that to us.
[02:04:53]  I think it's cost us probably a percent and a half of GDP growth over the last 50 years.
[02:05:01]  All right, let's get some answers for you.
[02:05:07]  There's a lot to respond to there.
[02:05:09]  I mean, I would just say, in terms of tariffs being a pro-growth policy and bringing us to an era of American prosperity, as the President likes to talk about, I think the evidence there shows the opposite.
[02:05:25]  And I think that we could also just look at, you know, we don't even have to draw on the vast empirical literature.
[02:05:32]  It's been very most topical.
[02:05:33]  We could actually just look at what happened over the course of 2025.
[02:05:37]  You know, the President, one of the stated goals of his tariff policy was to reshore American manufacturing.
[02:05:45]  But if you actually look at the data for 2025, manufacturing employment actually fell.
[02:05:52]  Manufacturing overall actually performed very poorly in 2025.
[02:05:57]  And I think a lot of that could be attributed to the tariffs raising input costs for businesses, which makes it more expensive for them to produce.
[02:06:07]  And then as a result of that, they hire less and they invest less.
[02:06:13]  And then in terms of the dollar, I mean, another thing that we also saw in 2025 is even the just announcements of tariffs, before they were imposed, would have significant impacts.
[02:06:26]  On the markets and cause the dollar to fall, because foreign investors would start to lose confidence.
[02:06:34]  Rather, foreigners and American investors would lose confidence in investing in American markets under the proposed tariff regime.
[02:06:43]  So I just think that if you look at the data and what we've seen in 2025, it's really not clear that the tariffs themselves are an engine of prosperity.
[02:06:58]  So the caller did bring up tariffs as a negotiating tactic to address really unfair trading practices by other countries.
[02:07:06]  Yeah, so let's talk about that.
[02:07:09]  So I have a few thoughts on that.
[02:07:12]  So I think that there are, you know, there are certainly, it is certainly the case that the U.S. does have certain legitimate grievances against China, say, intellectual property theft, just to raise one issue.
[02:07:25]  But for me, I think a much, I mean, better, well, there's a couple of ways I think that we could go about this in a better way.
[02:07:32]  One, there is the WTO and people, they do argue that the process is broken and it does need to be reformed.
[02:07:40]  But I think that the U.S. should not abandon the WTO.
[02:07:44]  I think we should try to use that to get better terms with some of these countries.
[02:07:52]  I would also add that I think it is a tremendous mistake that the U.S. withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, I guess, a decade ago now.
[02:08:01]  I think had we done that, that would have allowed us to engage in better trading relationships with a lot of allies in that region, say like Vietnam, for instance.
[02:08:11]  And I think that from our perspective, we would much rather, even from a national security perspective, perhaps we would much rather be trading with Vietnam than China in certain industries.

=== Steel and Nafta Effects (12:06) ===

[02:08:24]  And that trade agreement would have enabled us to do that.
[02:08:28]  But the president withdrew, and instead we pursued this tariff policy that has had many other downstream negative effects.
[02:08:35]  All right, let's talk to Mel in Long Island, New York, Independent Line.
[02:08:40]  You're on the air.
[02:08:41]  Yeah, good morning.
[02:08:44]  60 years ago, I went into an industry that was an import distributor of nuts, bolts, and screws and other fasteners.
[02:08:53]  The main supplier at that time was Japan.
[02:08:57]  And we would deal with trading companies, Japanese trading companies, which were based in New York.
[02:09:06]  When I learned about what the tariff was, it was basically when we would quote a price from the Japanese trading companies on an item, we would have to tack on.
[02:09:16]  Then it was the iron and steel tariff.
[02:09:19]  It is strictly a tariff.
[02:09:21]  It's strictly an add-on cost to a product.
[02:09:25]  Now, that product became obsolete in the United States because the manufacturers who were involved in manufacturing here in the United States went out of business.
[02:09:36]  Bethlehem Steel was one of them.
[02:09:39]  Buffalo Bolt was another one.
[02:09:41]  A big one down south was Southern Screw Company.
[02:09:44]  These companies were all basically antiquated machinery and not able to compete in the world market.
[02:09:52]  So Consequently, Japan became a major exporter.
[02:09:57]  And all the panic turned out in this country, how Japan, Japan, Japan, they were bringing up a lot of revenue.
[02:10:05]  They were buying property in New York at that time.
[02:10:08]  They became a, as you would call it, a monster economic power.
[02:10:13]  That shifted eventually over to China and Taiwan and Korea.
[02:10:18]  And eventually it came over, went over to Vietnam and the Philippines.
[02:10:23]  So the product that I was dealing with was strictly tariff-related.
[02:10:29]  Added on iron and steel tariffs.
[02:10:31]  The United States never collected quote-unquote money from them, but it was tacked onto the price that you would pay for a product.
[02:10:40]  All right, Mel.
[02:10:42]  Any comments on that?
[02:10:44]  Well, I think we can make it, I'll say a little bit about the steel and aluminum tariffs because the U.S. International Trade Commission, they put out a large report.
[02:10:55]  This was a couple years ago now, actually looking at the impacts of the steel and aluminum tariffs on the American economy.
[02:11:02]  And look, it is the case that the steel and aluminum tariffs, you know, they definitely created some jobs in the steel and aluminum producing industries.
[02:11:12]  But because there are, as the caller notes, so many different kinds of products that use steel and aluminum in the production of those goods, there were many more industries that were negatively impacted by those tariffs.
[02:11:29]  And on NECT, they actually led to a reduction employment because the jobs that were lost in those steel and aluminum consuming industries offset the job gains that were in the steel and aluminum producing industries.
[02:11:47]  I want to ask you about refunds.
[02:11:49]  You mentioned it briefly.
[02:11:51]  We don't know if that's going to happen, but I want to read you a portion of Justice Kavanaugh's dissenting opinion on this.
[02:12:00]  He said the interim effects of the court's decision could be substantial.
[02:12:04]  The U.S. may be required to refund billions of dollars to importers who paid the IEPA tariffs, even though some importers may have already passed on costs to consumers or others.
[02:12:15]  As was acknowledged at Oral Argument, the refund process is likely to be a mess.
[02:12:22]  The way I see this is it doesn't have to be difficult unless the admin really wants it to be.
[02:12:29]  And this is because the CB, the Customs Border Patrol, they have all the receipts of the tariffs that were paid.
[02:12:36]  They've constructed within the U.S. within U.S. International Trade Commission database, they have these particular codes that correspond to those tariff goods.
[02:12:49]  So they know exactly how much was paid.
[02:12:55]  And even though this is, you know, I mean, it is a lot.
[02:12:59]  It is a substantial pool of money.
[02:13:01]  And perhaps CBP is understaffed at the moment.
[02:13:06]  There's no reason why the government should not be able to follow through on this and issue those refunds.
[02:13:12]  And the U.S. International Court of Trade is going to be responsible for overseeing that process.
[02:13:21]  I want to ask you about this so-called secondary market on refunds.
[02:13:25]  This is the front page of the business and finance portion of the Wall Street Journal, today's Wall Street Journal.
[02:13:32]  And it says prices jump for tariff refund claims.
[02:13:36]  It says some businesses don't want to deal with the mess and are opting to sell the rights to any refunds they might be due.
[02:13:44]  So essentially, investors are coming in and saying, we'll buy your right to a refund on like pennies to the dollar.
[02:13:53]  This is interesting.
[02:13:55]  I have not had a chance to read very deeply into this, but I will add to that there is another sort of legally complex issue that might be sort of relayed, which is it is actually the importer of record that pays the tariffs, and that might not always be the importing business.
[02:14:11]  It could be some type of intermediary.
[02:14:14]  And then whatever that intermediary negotiated with the business is how much would be remitted to the business.
[02:14:21]  So it's actually possible that there could be yet another perhaps another legal hurdle that also needs to be clear there.
[02:14:32]  David in Chadbourne, North Carolina, Independent Line, good morning.
[02:14:36]  Hey, good morning, Mimi.
[02:14:38]  Good morning, Alex.
[02:14:39]  I've got a couple of different questions I'd like to ask.
[02:14:42]  One would be the NAFTA.
[02:14:46]  Of course, I'm old to remember NAFTA when it came through and it just devastated the South.
[02:14:53]  All our jobs, all the factories shut down, everything went across to other countries.
[02:14:59]  And evidently, there's no way that anyone, no one's tackling NAFTA.
[02:15:04]  I think Trump tried the first term, but evidently it's so deep you can't do it because I'm assuming all the factories are closed.
[02:15:12]  You know, it would cost so much to rebuild.
[02:15:15]  But NAFTA versus tariffs, I guess my question would be, isn't tariffs a good idea since NAFTA has taken such a hit to our economy over the last 30 years?
[02:15:32]  And the second question would be, are other countries charging the U.S. tariffs?
[02:15:38]  And now we're just now starting to charge them tariffs.
[02:15:41]  That's, in my opinion, that would be fair.
[02:15:44]  So, could you help me with that?
[02:15:47]  Yep.
[02:15:47]  So, two things to respond to.
[02:15:51]  So, I actually, I'll start by saying I actually disagree with the premise that NAFTA and the USMCA have been bad for the American economy.
[02:16:00]  In fact, and I'll note this: we actually have a very, the president had a very large USMCA exemption in place for the IEPA tariffs.
[02:16:10]  In fact, it's actually in place now under Section 122.
[02:16:12]  And USMCA is the replacement for NAFTA.
[02:16:15]  Correct.
[02:16:16]  Yes.
[02:16:17]  And I think if you actually look at the import data there, what you actually see is that American consumers and businesses have actually been, we're actually somewhat insulated from the IIPA tariffs because of the USMCA exemption.
[02:16:34]  So if you look at the imports, after the Trump imposed his tariff regime, USMCA compliant goods began surging through the border.
[02:16:45]  In fact, I think the latest data that we looked at showed that almost close to 90% of all goods that were coming through the border were USMCA compliant, both from Canada and Mexico.
[02:16:57]  And a lot of that was just the firms, you know, choosing, it wasn't so much supply chain shifts, a lot of them were just filing the paperwork to get those exemptions.
[02:17:05]  It was more worth their time to do that.
[02:17:07]  But had those exemptions, had the USMCA, you know, those exemptions not been in place, businesses and American consumers would have been hit with even more price increases.
[02:17:20]  And then the second thing, the caller did have another question about other countries charging.
[02:17:25]  They're tariffing us, so it would be fair for us to tariff them.
[02:17:28]  So look, I will say, I am very much a believer in free trade agreements because those agreements, they often lead to reciprocal tariff reduction and both sides bringing their tariff rates down.
[02:17:45]  And I would be supportive of agreements that do that.
[02:17:50]  But the one thing I want to highlight is that, I mean, the president himself is not really trying to negotiate to lower tariffs.
[02:17:57]  He's trying to negotiate to higher tariffs because even in the so-called deals that have been achieved, while the exporting country agrees to lower their tariff rates on our goods as they flow into their country, we were still leaving higher tariffs in place on their imports.
[02:18:22]  And I do not see that as very fair.
[02:18:25]  And I think that also has downstream negative effects for the American economy.
[02:18:29]  So finally, Alex, when or if will the American consumer see an impact to these reciprocal tariffs being taken away?
[02:18:39]  Right.
[02:18:40]  So this is a great question, a question that's on everyone's mind these days.
[02:18:44]  So we know from business surveys and some academic papers that have been written all this that what we did see in 2025 was modest price increases from the tariffs, about between five and six percentage points.
[02:19:01]  The reason we didn't see as much as maybe you would have expected is that we know from the surveys that a lot of businesses had reported that they were kind of adopting the wait-and-see approach because they didn't know what the tariff regime, what tariff regime was going to be in place.
[02:19:14]  A lot of them had front-loaded their inventories earlier in 2025, so they were drawing down on those.
[02:19:21]  So because of the uncertainty under which these businesses were operating under, at least in the short run, some of the costs were being absorbed by those businesses rather than passed on to the retail price.
[02:19:34]  But the one point I want to make is that that does not mean that the consumers were not bearing any of the costs because when firms, even when they're absorbing the costs, that is going to be a hit to their investments and a hit to employment.
[02:19:49]  And all of that has negative effects on consumers going forward.
[02:19:55]  So to sort of just tie everything together, there were some modest price increases.
[02:20:02]  And with the refunds, we should expect some of that to flow back to consumers over time.
[02:20:09]  On certain perishable goods, I think it would be impacted pretty quickly on some of the manufactured goods.
[02:20:15]  I think it's possible that that could take time.
[02:20:17]  And again, a lot of this really just depends on what tariff regime is going to be in place.
[02:20:22]  And as long as firms are kind of continuing to operate under that uncertainty, it could take time before any savings flow back to the consumer.

=== Together Keep Democracy In View (02:33) ===

[02:20:31]  All right, that's Alex Durante, Senior Economist at the Tax Foundation.
[02:20:34]  You can find him at taxfoundation.org.
[02:20:37]  Thanks so much for joining us.
[02:20:39]  Thank you.
[02:20:39]  Up next, it's more of your phone calls in Open Forum.
[02:20:43]  Anything you'd like to talk about as long as it's related to politics and public policy, start calling now.
[02:20:48]  Republicans 202-748-8001.
[02:20:50]  Democrats 202-748-8000.
[02:20:53]  And Independents 202-748-8000 and 2.
[02:20:57]  We'll be right back.
[02:21:05]  Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series.
[02:21:09]  Sunday, with our guest three-time Pulitzer Prize winning author Rick Atkinson, author of In-Depth Revolutionary War and World War II trilogies.
[02:21:19]  and whose other books include The Long Gray Line, Crusade, and In the Company of Soldiers.
[02:21:25]  He joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein.
[02:21:30]  Wasn't one book enough?
[02:21:31]  Because when you say you're going to write a trilogy, if you're tired of the subject after the first book, you've got to write the second and the third.
[02:21:37]  So did you ever think maybe you should have just say, I'm going to do one at a time?
[02:21:40]  I had two small epiphanies.
[02:21:44]  One was that the great events in American history are bottomless.
[02:21:48]  And the other epiphany was that you could tell the story as a triptych, three panels.
[02:21:53]  The Liberation of Europe starts in North Africa, and then it evolves 100 miles across the Mediterranean to Sicily and Italy.
[02:22:02]  And then at Normandy, you have the final panel.
[02:22:05]  Watch America's Book Club with Rick Atkinson Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific.
[02:22:12]  only on C-SPAM.
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[02:22:45]  Together, we keep democracy in view.
[02:22:50]  Washington Journal continues.
[02:22:52]  Welcome back to Washington Journal.
[02:22:54]  It is open forum.
[02:22:55]  Looking forward to hearing from you and taking your calls.
[02:22:58]  A few things for your schedule.
[02:22:59]  In about 10 minutes, the House will have a very brief pro forma session.

=== Sharon's Announcement: $10 Trillion Debt (15:47) ===

[02:23:05]  We're going to take you there and then come right back to the program.
[02:23:09]  Also at 9:30, a hearing on the nominations of two assistant defense secretaries.
[02:23:14]  That's going to be at the Senate Armed Services Committee.
[02:23:17]  We'll have live coverage of that on C-SPAN 3.
[02:23:21]  And then right after this program at 10 a.m. Eastern, it's a hearing on banking regulations.
[02:23:27]  The witnesses include Michelle Bowman, Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision, FDIC Chairman Travis Hill, U.S. Comptroller of the Currency, Jonathan Gould, and Kyle Hoffman, Chairman of the National Credit Union Administration.
[02:23:39]  That's a Senate Banking Committee hearing.
[02:23:42]  Again, we have live coverage of that.
[02:23:43]  We're going to take you straight there right after this program at 10 a.m.
[02:23:48]  Now it's time for your calls.
[02:23:50]  Open Forum, Ryan Orange, Massachusetts, Independent Line.
[02:23:53]  Good morning.
[02:23:55]  Hi.
[02:23:55]  I watched the State of the Union, and I was enthralled to see President Donald Trump talk about all the failures of the Democratic Party and how the Democratic Party has failed this country when it comes to open border policies and taxes.
[02:24:15]  And it was very refreshing to see.
[02:24:20]  Frankly, he exposed them for their corruption and the mail-in ballot situation that has been affecting elections since 2020.
[02:24:31]  And it was very refreshing to hear.
[02:24:34]  And I think financially, I've been doing better since the admission of Donald Trump into the presidency again.
[02:24:46]  Okay.
[02:24:47]  Yeah.
[02:24:48]  Ron, Republican in California, you're on the air, Ron.
[02:24:53]  Good morning.
[02:24:54]  Here's a couple of things you should think about.
[02:24:56]  These are the end times.
[02:24:58]  I mean that sincerely.
[02:25:00]  Mimi, I'm sure you remember when we used to be free.
[02:25:03]  Remember when we had the rule of law in this country?
[02:25:07]  Remember when we had freedom to travel about?
[02:25:11]  Nowadays, you know, people can be taken.
[02:25:15]  It doesn't matter where we are in the country.
[02:25:18]  ICE people are out of control.
[02:25:20]  The prices are out of control.
[02:25:22]  And one of the things that I think that's important that no one really is grasping right now is that we're going through a period of $3 trillion in annual debt, which is going to be caused by the current administration.
[02:25:39]  Right now, the servicing of the debt is $1 trillion.
[02:25:44]  So every time one of these MAGA people call in and say, gee, witch, you know, these illegal immigrants are causing a lot of money out of my pocket, you should start looking at the annual cost of debt.
[02:25:59]  $1.1 trillion, they're projecting for this year, $1.1 trillion in servicing debt.
[02:26:06]  That's just interest.
[02:26:08]  Now, next year or in the next two years, it's going to go up to $2.3 trillion.
[02:26:15]  So the bottom line of this story is these are the end times, and I mean this sincerely.
[02:26:20]  Unless we take our country back, we're going to be sitting on a bad period of time for many, many years to come.
[02:26:30]  All right, Ron.
[02:26:30]  Here's Sharon in Minnesota Democrat.
[02:26:33]  Hi, Sharon.
[02:26:35]  Good morning, Mimi.
[02:26:37]  Thanks for taking my call.
[02:26:39]  I want to thank you for earlier in the segment earlier that you kind of stood up for poor people out here just trying to survive.
[02:26:50]  Telling that one gentleman that, you know, sometimes it costs money to just can't afford to eat.
[02:26:55]  We can't afford to exercise.
[02:26:57]  And I thank you for that.
[02:26:59]  And that's what my topic is.
[02:27:01]  I went and had my annual physical yesterday.
[02:27:04]  I'm 65 years old.
[02:27:06]  I'm legally blind.
[02:27:07]  I'm on disability.
[02:27:09]  I went to my doc, and I lost 28 pounds in the last year.
[02:27:16]  I did not need to lose 28 pounds.
[02:27:20]  I did not try to lose 28 pounds.
[02:27:26]  I lost the 28 pounds because I cannot afford to eat anymore.
[02:27:31]  Under Biden, I'm sorry.
[02:27:33]  I'm so sorry.
[02:27:37]  Under Biden, I was able to put $100 a month away for food along with my SNAP.
[02:27:46]  And I did okay.
[02:27:47]  I could get fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, and meat.
[02:27:51]  It is just me.
[02:27:53]  But now, with grocery prices so high, propane, electricity, out of this world, I now only allow myself $65 a month for food.
[02:28:06]  Sharon, are you on SNAP benefits?
[02:28:09]  Let me tell you, under Joe Biden, I received $80 a month for SNAP.
[02:28:15]  That was taken away from me under Donald Trump.
[02:28:18]  He took it away.
[02:28:19]  He gave me $24 a month.
[02:28:22]  I did receive that for a couple of months.
[02:28:24]  Then he took it down to $12, $12.50 a month.
[02:28:29]  I said, screw you.
[02:28:31]  So I'm not doing that no more.
[02:28:34]  So now I get $65 a month, Mimi.
[02:28:37]  And for them people out there, all them so-called, all these Republicans that are doing so flipping well right now, I have three potatoes.
[02:28:47]  I have a half a tomato.
[02:28:49]  I have three bananas, one apple, one can of soup, a half a loaf of bread, one egg, and one can of green beans.
[02:28:56]  I do not get paid until the third.
[02:28:59]  I am disability blind.
[02:29:01]  I cannot drive a car.
[02:29:03]  I'm 15 miles out of town, so I am not able to just O trot my butt down to the food shelf.
[02:29:09]  I used to volunteer at the food shelf.
[02:29:11]  I can't even do that anymore.
[02:29:13]  I don't understand.
[02:29:13]  I'd like somebody to explain to me why is it always the poor people that are helping the poor people.
[02:29:18]  I don't understand.
[02:29:20]  But what I want to say, Mimi, is that it's really close to coming.
[02:29:23]  Like that man said, the end is coming near, and it can't be anymore true for me because I've lost 28 pounds in one year.
[02:29:32]  My doctor told me I cannot do that again.
[02:29:35]  But with $65 a month, what the hell am I supposed to do?
[02:29:39]  So I suspect within the next year, I probably won't be alive anymore because I don't know what else to do.
[02:29:47]  I cannot afford to live anymore.
[02:29:51]  But I would love for you to bring on a guest that can maybe explain to us why is it that all these Republican callers are all doing so God blessed well, but other people like me are not.
[02:30:04]  Now, there's no bootstraps for me to pull up anymore.
[02:30:07]  It is just what it is, and I have accepted my life for what it is.
[02:30:12]  But I'm just saying, yes, the end is coming near.
[02:30:14]  And for me, a hell of a lot faster than for some other people.
[02:30:19]  I'm so sorry.
[02:30:20]  This isn't even, I'm not even the worst.
[02:30:23]  There's people out there that are worse off than me.
[02:30:27]  And shame, shame, shame.
[02:30:31]  Sorry, you're struggling, Sharon.
[02:30:33]  Roberto is in Houston, Texas, Independent Line.
[02:30:36]  Go ahead, Roberto.
[02:30:38]  Thank you, Mimi.
[02:30:39]  For the people of color just now, I'm going to pray for her.
[02:30:42]  This is horrible.
[02:30:44]  I want to make two points.
[02:30:45]  I'll be very quick.
[02:30:46]  The first one's very brief.
[02:30:48]  And it is a statement, actually, we have lost our republic, so there's nothing to celebrate this July 4th.
[02:30:55]  And that's this perfect segue after the lady just spoke to us about her condition.
[02:31:00]  Now, the second point, and I'll try to be as brief as possible, and I hope you have a segment tomorrow on this.
[02:31:07]  U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Huckabee, yesterday announced that dual citizens, those who are U.S. citizens and Israeli citizens, will get passports indicating if they're settled in the West Bank.
[02:31:21]  I would like to make an announcement.
[02:31:23]  I would like to announce that on behalf of humanity, Israel and the United States each owe $10 trillion, American dollars, for the Gaza genocide and for the unlawful occupation of the West Bank.
[02:31:37]  The U.N. should receive the reparations on behalf of Palestine.
[02:31:42]  Furthermore, if Israel refuses to pay, then the U.N. recognition of Israel should be withdrawn.
[02:31:49]  So thank you, Mimi.
[02:31:51]  All right.
[02:31:52]  And we're standing by to take you to the House of Representatives.
[02:31:57]  They're going to have a very quick pro forma session.
[02:32:01]  They will gavel in.
[02:32:02]  They will do a little bit of business and then gavel right back out.
[02:32:07]  So don't go away.
[02:32:08]  We will come right back to you here on the calls and see if we can get Robert in Lynchburg, Virginia, Independent Line.
[02:32:17]  Go ahead, Robert.
[02:32:19]  Good morning, Mimi.
[02:32:21]  I just called in to say that I'm like that lady.
[02:32:26]  I'm afraid for her.
[02:32:28]  And she's having a hard time.
[02:32:31]  And she's not the only one.
[02:32:32]  All these Republicans called in talking about they're doing so well, but they vote against their own interest.
[02:32:39]  And none of them will say anything against Trump.
[02:32:43]  But Trump just shouldn't even be in the office.
[02:32:47]  He's a cook.
[02:32:50]  All right, Robert.
[02:32:52]  And Randy in Kentucky, Republican.
[02:32:55]  You're on the air, Randy.
[02:32:57]  Good morning.
[02:32:59]  All these 501c3 corporations, we need to stop them and get rid of them.
[02:33:04]  Just like that lady that called the end that's losing weight stuff, and he's funny.
[02:33:08]  These 501c3, the 501c corporations, they do nothing for society.
[02:33:14]  They should have helped this lady here voluntarily or freely.
[02:33:18]  So they steal our money through communism, through the government, so that people get to write off their offerings or tithes and offerings if you're a church.
[02:33:28]  Or if you donate to a 501c corporation, if you're a Chinese or Russian trying to infiltrate our country, you get to write that off your taxes also.
[02:33:37]  So out of the goodness of my heart, I would gladly help that lady.
[02:33:43]  I had such a good life and still continue to do.
[02:33:47]  But that lady is something that God would put in me to do to true charity in my heart to help her out if she's in true need of assistance.
[02:33:59]  So your issue is the tax deduction that people get for donating, not necessarily the organizations themselves.
[02:34:05]  Is that right, Randy?
[02:34:07]  Yeah, organizations, as long as you put your own money and you don't steal it from everybody else, it's fine.
[02:34:12]  So you guys are a 501c3 corporation, too.
[02:34:16]  And the people that donate to you write it off to a government, which is me, because every time somebody does tax breaks, somebody else has to pay for it.
[02:34:24]  All right.
[02:34:25]  So Randy, we've got to go to the House.
[02:34:27]  This is going to be quick.
[02:34:28]  We will come back to the program right after they gavel out.
[02:34:35]  The House will be in order.
[02:34:37]  Shay Lears, Chair Lays before the House Communication from the Speaker.
[02:34:43]  The Speaker's Rooms, Washington, D.C., February 26, 2026.
[02:34:49]  I hereby appoint the Honorable Mike Kennedy to act as Speaker Pro Tempore on this day.
[02:34:53]  Signed, Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House of Representatives.
[02:34:57]  The prayer will be offered by our guest chaplain, Reverend Lisa Wink Schultz, Office of the Senate Chaplain, Washington, D.C. Let us pray.
[02:35:07]  Lord, you are the God of all compassion.
[02:35:11]  And just as a father has compassion on his children, you have compassion on all those who fear you.
[02:35:17]  May all who work in the House of Representatives truly fear you, for this is the whole duty of man.
[02:35:24]  We praise you for being slow to anger and abounding in love.
[02:35:28]  You do not treat us as we deserve.
[02:35:31]  During this Lenten season, make us keenly aware that we are like grass, which flourishes like the flowers of the field.
[02:35:38]  But when the wind blows, it is gone and never to be remembered.
[02:35:43]  Give wisdom and strength to our lawmakers as they work for righteousness and justice, especially for the oppressed.
[02:35:50]  Satisfy them with your love so that their youth is renewed like the eagles.
[02:35:55]  We pray in your loving name.
[02:35:57]  Amen.
[02:35:59]  Amen.
[02:36:00]  The chair has examined the journal of the last day's proceedings and announces to the House the approval thereof.
[02:36:05]  Pursuant to clause one of Rule 1, the journal of the last day's proceedings is approved.
[02:36:10]  The chair will lead the House in the Pledge of Allegiance.
[02:36:13]  I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
[02:36:27]  Without objection, the House stands adjourned until 9 a.m. on Monday, March 2nd, 2026.
[02:36:35]  And they have just gaveled out, so we are back with you in open forum.
[02:36:40]  As you might know, the Clintons are scheduled to testify in front of the House Oversight Committee.
[02:36:47]  This is NBC News.
[02:36:48]  Former first couple will sit for depositions in Chepuqua, New York after a standoff with House Republicans over the format of their testimony.
[02:36:57]  And joining us to talk about that is Congressional Reporter for Politico, Haley Fuchs.
[02:37:03]  Haley, welcome to the program.
[02:37:06]  Thanks so much for having me.
[02:37:07]  So first, tell us about these scheduled depositions.
[02:37:10]  Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testifies today, former President Clinton tomorrow.
[02:37:17]  Why are they separate and will they be under oath?
[02:37:21]  There are two separate subpoenas for Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton.
[02:37:25]  And yes, they will be speaking under oath.
[02:37:27]  It's quite remarkable that a former president is being forced to testify before a House committee in 2026.
[02:37:36]  And we just actually got news of what topics that they agreed to speak on.
[02:37:41]  The House Oversight Committee and the Clintons agreed to limit the questioning to issues around Epstein and sex trafficking.
[02:37:50]  And when you say that it's quite extraordinary, does this open up the possibility of future former presidents, namely Donald Trump, once he's out of office?
[02:38:00]  Would he be, would, for instance, Democrats be able to call him for questioning in front of a House committee?
[02:38:09]  Certainly.
[02:38:09]  I think there is an expectation here that the way the pendulum politics swings, Democrats will ultimately use this tactic in a future administration.
[02:38:21]  So will these depositions of the Clintons be videotaped and transcribed?
[02:38:29]  But will those be made public if they are?
[02:38:33]  Yes, the video and transcripts will be made public.
[02:38:37]  What's notable here is that the Clintons really wanted to have a public hearing as opposed to a closed-door deposition.
[02:38:44]  But James Comer, who's the chair of the House Oversight Committee, insisted that at least first they had to sit behind closed doors for testimony.

=== Closed Door Testimonies (05:26) ===

[02:38:52]  So, but what's the difference?
[02:38:54]  I mean, if it's going to be videotaped and transcribed and that videotape made public, isn't that the same as testifying in public?
[02:39:02]  It means there's a slight delay in what the public sees versus when lawmakers can leave the closed-door meeting and kind of shape the narrative of what happened behind closed doors versus if the hearing is live, America sees it kind of as it's happening.
[02:39:17]  And once that is made public, you will see that in its entirety on C-SPAN.
[02:39:21]  So you can definitely watch it here.
[02:39:24]  The Clintons, Haley, will be sitting for the depositions in Chappaqua, New York.
[02:39:29]  Tell us about the negotiations involved in, you know, you mentioned a little bit about what they would be talking about, but as far as where it's going to be and who is going to be attending those depositions.
[02:39:44]  So these depositions are really a long time coming.
[02:39:46]  It took months for the Clintons to fully agree to sit and testify.
[02:39:51]  First, when the subpoenas were issued in July, the Clintons were arguing over the terms of their depositions.
[02:40:00]  And ultimately, neither Bill nor Hillary Clinton showed up for their scheduled depositions.
[02:40:06]  And that triggered a process where lawmakers were considering holding them in contempt.
[02:40:11]  If Bill and Hillary were held in contempt of the House, that could mean that they were put in jail.
[02:40:18]  It could mean that the Trump administration chooses to prosecute them.
[02:40:21]  And Democrats, interestingly, actually voted on the House Oversight Committee to approve contempt measures for Bill and Hillary Clinton.
[02:40:32]  And it was really remarkable in part because obviously, you know, Bill Clinton is a former president of their party, and yet they were kind of putting the investigation above party.
[02:40:44]  So former President Bill Clinton has denied any wrongdoing.
[02:40:47]  He has said previously that he cut ties with Epstein before Epstein was accused in 2006 of having sex with a minor.
[02:40:56]  What does the release of the Epstein files show as far as a relationship with former President Bill Clinton?
[02:41:05]  There are photos of Bill Clinton with Jeffrey Epstein.
[02:41:08]  There are photos of him in the files.
[02:41:11]  And there aren't, as you mentioned, any evidence of wrongdoing, but it's part of this broader narrative of how Jeffrey Epstein surrounded himself with powerful people and created this kind of network of influence.
[02:41:25]  And in an interview with the BBC, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said, quote, we have no links.
[02:41:32]  We have a very clear record that we'd be willing to talk about.
[02:41:35]  My husband has said he took some rides on the airplane for his charitable work.
[02:41:39]  I don't recall ever meeting him meeting Epstein.
[02:41:43]  Why is Hillary Clinton being deposed?
[02:41:47]  I think lawmakers want to know whatever she knows and the extent of her relationship with Gee Lane Maxwell, who is the only convicted co-conspirator in Epstein's sex trafficking scheme.
[02:42:00]  And it is interesting that Hillary is testifying because, as you mentioned, she does not remember meeting Jeffrey Epstein.
[02:42:06]  And it's not quite clear that lawmakers might get that much information out of her.
[02:42:10]  All right, that's Haley Fuchs, congressional reporter for Politico.
[02:42:15]  Thanks so much for joining us.
[02:42:17]  Thanks.
[02:42:19]  And we will go right back to your calls in open forum until the end of the program and go to Henry in Alabama, Democrat.
[02:42:26]  Hi, Henry.
[02:42:28]  Hello.
[02:42:29]  Yes, I would like to try to understand why it hadn't brought to the forefront that President Trump has been accused of having sex with a 13-year-old and the fact that he lied about being on Epstein's plane, find out he'd been on the plane eight different times.
[02:42:56]  And this man just openly lies to the public, and they accept it.
[02:43:02]  That's all I have to say.
[02:43:03]  Well, this is on the front page of the New York Times.
[02:43:06]  Epstein records omit full claim against Trump.
[02:43:10]  It says FBI's memos missing, unverified accusation by a woman who was a minor in the 1980s.
[02:43:18]  It says the vast trove of documents released by the Justice Department and its investigations into Epstein failed to include some key materials related to a woman who made an accusation against President Trump.
[02:43:32]  According to a review by the New York Times, the materials are FBI memos summarizing interviews by the Bureau did in connection to claims made in 2019 by a woman who came forward after Mr. Epstein's arrest to say she had been sexually assaulted by both Mr. Trump and the financier decades earlier when she was a minor.
[02:43:54]  It says the existence of the memos was revealed in an index listing the investigative materials related to her account, which was publicly released.
[02:44:03]  According to that index, the FBI conducted four interviews in connection with her claims and wrote summaries about each one, but only one of the summaries, which describes her accusations against Mr. Epstein, was released by the Justice Department.

=== Prices Everything Matters (13:32) ===

[02:44:18]  The other three are missing.
[02:44:21]  That's in the New York Times.
[02:44:23]  And let's talk to Joanne in Illinois, Independent.
[02:44:26]  Good morning, Joanne.
[02:44:28]  Hi, I really don't have any comment about the Clintons, except that I remember growing up seeing them being interrogated all the time with that whitewater stuff.
[02:44:39]  So I'm glad they're not going to be on TV.
[02:44:43]  I wanted to speak about the poor woman who is losing weight and my experience with the economy.
[02:44:53]  I noticed that it started going up the moment, not shortly after Biden shut down that pipeline.
[02:45:02]  If you recall, that was his first year.
[02:45:06]  And I remember every time I go to the grocery store, I'd feel sick to my stomach.
[02:45:11]  And this was like five years ago.
[02:45:14]  Okay.
[02:45:15]  Same with the gas.
[02:45:18]  Then I belong to a group of, now they call themselves educators, but teachers, their moms.
[02:45:27]  And I would meet with them once a month.
[02:45:29]  And finally, I got the courage to question them in June a year ago before the election about inflation and going to the grocery store.
[02:45:43]  And I said, don't you feel anything?
[02:45:45]  Don't you see any differences?
[02:45:47]  And they all looked at me like I was an idiot, and they're all Democrats.
[02:45:51]  And they all were like dumbfounded.
[02:45:53]  And then I questioned them.
[02:45:56]  They're all grandmothers, too, of small girls.
[02:45:59]  And I questioned them about the curriculum in the schools and what was going on with how our children are being influenced unnecessarily, sexually, at that age.
[02:46:13]  And they all looked at me like I was nuts.
[02:46:15]  Either they were ignorant or they pretended they didn't know what was going on.
[02:46:19]  But my point is that this has been going on for years.
[02:46:23]  And also, I think when all those crates were piling up in San Diego, never heard a word from the Transportation Secretary, Pete Budijudge.
[02:46:34]  You never heard a word.
[02:46:35]  He didn't show his face.
[02:46:36]  He didn't try to do anything to help that.
[02:46:40]  And I think that would have helped with the delivery of these items.
[02:46:44]  And that's all I have to say.
[02:46:45]  Thanks.
[02:46:46]  Monica Fort Mill, South Carolina, Democrat, you're on the air.
[02:46:52]  Hi, Mimi.
[02:46:53]  Good morning.
[02:46:54]  Morning.
[02:46:56]  I just want to say, I wish that those that think we are going to remain a republic after this administration think we are going to be sadly mistaken.
[02:47:12]  I want people to pay attention to what is happening, not what they say, but what they're doing.
[02:47:23]  It's apparent that they're trying to destroy our elections.
[02:47:28]  I mean, they've gone into Fulton County and taken these seized the votes, voter rolls.
[02:47:36]  They have threatened Minnesota to give up their voter roll.
[02:47:40]  Why?
[02:47:41]  There's a reason why they're doing this.
[02:47:45]  I pray that we do have an election in November.
[02:47:49]  That's really all I have to say right now.
[02:47:52]  On the independent line in Sebring, Florida, Lisa, you're on the air.
[02:47:57]  Yes, I call the end up.
[02:47:59]  There's a very serious farming situation going on in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
[02:48:06]  We've had five young farmers from Southeast Arkansas commit suicide because of the conditions of the farming industry in those three states.
[02:48:15]  Neither their state or federal representatives have done anything.
[02:48:19]  News isn't picking it up.
[02:48:21]  And the farming situation is just in the dump as far as independent and generational farmers in that area now.
[02:48:34]  As far as the Epstein files, we can't trust this government to release those because of all the missteps and the lies that they've told pre-existing before they ever came out.
[02:48:48]  The young woman that they've cut her benefits under the guise of fraud is just one way for this government to take money from the poor and take it up the tier to the richer.
[02:49:02]  But someone needs to look into that farming situation in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana because you've got generational farmers that are going to lose everything in this administration.
[02:49:14]  Neither the state representatives or the federal representatives, nobody cares.
[02:49:21]  And that really is something that we, without farmers, what does the United States have?
[02:49:28]  We're going to have corporations taking over our food industry.
[02:49:32]  They've already taken over.
[02:49:33]  You know, they've got major monopolies running in most consumer goods already.
[02:49:39]  So, what's left for the rest of the people?
[02:49:41]  Yeah, so Lisa, this is what I was able to find on that.
[02:49:44]  Brownfield Ag News.
[02:49:47]  Mental health concerns grow as farmer suicides increase.
[02:49:51]  Now, this is from October of last year, but they are discussing that not necessarily in the states that you mentioned, but overall.
[02:50:01]  Richard in Missouri, line for Democrats.
[02:50:04]  Good morning.
[02:50:06]  Good morning.
[02:50:07]  I want to talk about over in Iran.
[02:50:10]  See, Iran has got a lot of oil, too.
[02:50:13]  So I guess just like Venzela, we go in there and we can take care of oil and help Israel defend them.
[02:50:24]  This deal about blowing up them boats and murdering them people down there in the Gulf.
[02:50:30]  I hope they keep track of that Admiral and all them people killing them people because someday we're going to have a trial just like they're just following orders like the Nazis did.
[02:50:41]  So well, so Richard, this is the update on the situation in Iran from Axios.
[02:50:49]  U.S.-Iran negotiators meet for three hours with Trump decision looming.
[02:50:54]  There is a picture there.
[02:50:55]  That's Jared Kushner, and that's Steve Witkoff.
[02:50:59]  And it says that the Omani foreign minister said the talks would resume later on Thursday.
[02:51:05]  That's today after a break.
[02:51:07]  The talks in Geneva could be the last chance for a diplomatic solution before Trump opts for war.
[02:51:13]  The message Kushner and Witkoff gave Trump after the meeting will have significant influence on the president's decision.
[02:51:21]  He did say in the State of the Union that he prefers a diplomatic solution, but he also laid out a case for war.
[02:51:29]  This is Gary in Minnesota, Independent Line.
[02:51:32]  Hi, Gary.
[02:51:33]  Hi, how are you guys doing?
[02:51:36]  I feel real sorry for that lady that was not getting any of the money.
[02:51:41]  And I'm real disgusted of both these parties that are running now, that run the Democrats, let all these people come into the country now.
[02:51:48]  They're getting $1,200 for food and housing and all this other stuff.
[02:51:53]  This poor lady, she could hardly make it.
[02:51:55]  It's just plain terrible.
[02:51:56]  And I think both parties better start waking up and helping these people out, even in Minnesota after they took so much money from Minnesota here.
[02:52:05]  And I voted for Democrats for years.
[02:52:08]  I don't know who to vote for anymore.
[02:52:10]  And this is real sad.
[02:52:11]  I'm a veteran of six.
[02:52:12]  My dad was in the jungles fighting and all.
[02:52:14]  The Democrats couldn't even stand up for most of the things.
[02:52:17]  I'm real upset about them.
[02:52:20]  And I don't even know any about voting anymore for these people because, boy, they're just so crooked.
[02:52:26]  All they do is want to make money, money, money.
[02:52:29]  And I thank you for taking my call.
[02:52:30]  I hope the veterans call in.
[02:52:33]  And even though I'm taking care of my wife, she's disabled and can't walk and stuff.
[02:52:38]  It's all time.
[02:52:39]  I'd love to have somebody come and help me.
[02:52:40]  If that lady, if I had more room in my house, I'd have people like that come and take care of us because they don't even help us veterans much either anyway.
[02:52:47]  So thank you so much.
[02:52:48]  So Gary's in Minnesota, and this is news from that state from the Washington Post, Trump administration to withhold $259 million in Minnesota Medicaid funds, citing fraud.
[02:53:02]  It says the move announced by Vice President JD Vance targets alleged health care fraud and signals a broader crackdown that could extend to other states.
[02:53:13]  That's at the Washington Post.
[02:53:16]  And this is Governor Tim Waltz, governor of Minnesota, who put this on X in response to that news.
[02:53:24]  He said, this is a campaign of retribution.
[02:53:27]  Trump is weaponizing the entirety of the federal government to punish blue states like Minnesota.
[02:53:32]  These cuts will be devastating for veterans, families with young kids, folks with disabilities, and working people across our state.
[02:53:42]  And going to Mickey now in Mississippi, Independent Line.
[02:53:46]  Hello, Mickey.
[02:53:48]  Hello.
[02:53:49]  I just wanted to say I watched the Black History thing with Trump the other night and was proud to see those people enjoy their time there and Ms. Cook's what she had to say about what she went through in Washington.
[02:54:09]  After that program went off, was on YouTube and y'all's Washington Journal came on with it.
[02:54:18]  It was actually Trump and Biden's debate there on TV.
[02:54:26]  And I stayed up and watched it and I was real surprised to hear all the questions that the two moderators asked them.
[02:54:35]  And I would only say to what the people say about the prices of everything right now to maybe watch the debate because after it, the debate with Kamala and Trump came on too.
[02:54:48]  And those two moderators asked them the same questions.
[02:54:51]  And they had a lot to do with about the prices of everything having gone so high under the Biden administration after they had took the office.
[02:55:05]  I would agree with the guy who said how Biden shut down the pipelines right away and let the Russians do what they did with their pipeline, running them over to Europe.
[02:55:22]  I think those things cost a lot of problems here in the U.S. with what they did under the Biden and Kamala administration and the questions that they asked at those debates about the price of food, the price of gas, the price of housing, the price of rent, the price of everything that normal people who are poor.
[02:55:47]  I'm just a poor person from Mississippi.
[02:55:49]  I don't make much money, but I do make enough to survive.
[02:55:54]  And gas itself and the simple things that I do in life helps me the most.
[02:56:00]  And I do believe that that helps everything that there is out there to come down and the prices of everything.
[02:56:08]  I've seen it under the first time Trump was there.
[02:56:11]  I know in 2008 or 9, what I worked and did to try to get by in life was almost shut down by the prices of everything going up in 2008, 9, and 2009, and everything getting way out of hand with the prices of things.
[02:56:28]  And then watched him come in in 2016, and everything for those four years dropped down to what they are.
[02:56:36]  I would say that I'm 60 years old now.
[02:56:40]  Over the last 16 years, we had eight years of Obama, four years of Trump, four years of Biden.
[02:56:49]  And I, in my world, the simple things in life, which is just gas, eggs, milk, and bread, to just get by and have something simple to eat.
[02:57:02]  My world has been a whole lot better under the four years of Trump from 016 to 2019 till the Chinese past year, Mickey.
[02:57:15]  Have things gotten better over the last year?
[02:57:18]  Yes, ma'am.
[02:57:19]  Here, where I'm at, I was real happy to see when I left the house yesterday and the day before that the price of gas was $2.16 right up there at the corner where I stop and get gas.
[02:57:32]  It hurt me significantly when it was $3.50 to $4.
[02:57:39]  And I want to let people know that Vice President JD Vance will be in Wisconsin today.
[02:57:46]  He's giving an economic speech there, and that's at 12 p.m. Eastern Time.

=== Byron's Prison Concerns (02:25) ===

[02:57:51]  We'll have live coverage of that here on C-SPAN.
[02:57:54]  Again, Vice President Vance talking about the economy in Wisconsin at 12 noon Eastern Time.
[02:58:00]  Byron Wilson, North Carolina, Independent Line.
[02:58:03]  Hello, Byron.
[02:58:05]  Yes, good morning.
[02:58:07]  It's amazing to see how slow the American people are.
[02:58:10]  The president don't control prices, but that's not what I'm called in for.
[02:58:15]  And everybody's calling in, trying to give the president credit.
[02:58:18]  They do not control no gas prices or nothing.
[02:58:21]  But the reason I can't call in is that, you know, I was in the military, and it's very important that they used to tell us when we go to clubs or whatever, you get drunk or whatever, especially when we were overseas, people are in there to try to get information from you.
[02:58:38]  Now, when I look at Epstein and all the people that was there, all those foreigners that was there, they need to be looking into this.
[02:58:48]  And you, C-SPAN, haven't even, you should be looking into this.
[02:58:54]  You know, it looked like this is a great place for them to be spying on us.
[02:58:58]  And I need to know what happened as far as that.
[02:59:00]  Maybe that's the reason they're holding it back.
[02:59:03]  But also, ma'am, Trump said he kicked Epstein out of his ranch and he couldn't stand him and he was a creep and all of that.
[02:59:12]  Now, if that was so about him and Epstein, why, and Maxwell, his wife, Epstein's wife, was worse than he was.
[02:59:21]  Why did he, why is he trying to pardon her?
[02:59:24]  Why did he send her to this clubhouse prison thing?
[02:59:29]  Why did he do that?
[02:59:31]  Ma'am, if you look at this, this woman over there, Epstein's wife, could put Trump away.
[02:59:39]  She knows everything.
[02:59:40]  That's the reason they did that for her.
[02:59:44]  Her death, she couldn't have died in prison because it would have looked too suspicious.
[02:59:49]  Epstein died in prison.
[02:59:51]  You guys haven't had a show on that.
[02:59:53]  The cameras went down during the 15 minutes.
[02:59:56]  I have a brother-in-law that's a correction officer.
[02:59:59]  He said that there's no way there's guys are watched 24 hours when they are on that watch, suicide watch.
[03:00:07]  And there's no way that they would have walked away and just let that happen like that and the cameras went off.
[03:00:13]  And we heard very little of that, C-SPAN.

=== Democrats Acting Spoiled (02:35) ===

[03:00:16]  You're supposed to be the people's radio station.
[03:00:18]  I love you.
[03:00:19]  Not radio station, but TV station.
[03:00:21]  I love you, C-SPAN.
[03:00:23]  Thank you, Byron.
[03:00:23]  I'm trying to do better.
[03:00:24]  And we love you too.
[03:00:25]  Jerry in Maine, Line for Democrats.
[03:00:28]  Good morning.
[03:00:30]  I've been listening to C-SPAN since Mr. Trump's been president.
[03:00:34]  And I'm going to make it quick.
[03:00:36]  All points of interest.
[03:00:38]  It's a process from the cabinet, from the president to his cabinet.
[03:00:44]  And it's so easy to blame.
[03:00:47]  I blame myself, but we all live on to say I've heard all the complaints from all three parties.
[03:00:58]  And it's sad.
[03:01:00]  It's sad because, number one, immigrants are human like us.
[03:01:04]  Yes, it's unfortunate that they came in unchecked and whatnot, but the process starts there.
[03:01:14]  Let's go to affordability on help that all different states, yes, have different taxes on help for the people that are low income, median income, and I'm one of those.
[03:01:31]  Now let's go to the State of the Union from Mr. Trump, from his cabinet, and all three two parties, the House, the Senate.
[03:01:47]  He should have ended his State of the Union.
[03:01:51]  And never mind all of us blaming each other.
[03:01:55]  Should have ended it.
[03:01:57]  Let's all work together.
[03:02:00]  Thank you, Mimi.
[03:02:02]  And Maria is next on the Red Line for Republicans in New Jersey.
[03:02:05]  Good morning.
[03:02:07]  Good morning.
[03:02:08]  How is everyone today?
[03:02:10]  Good.
[03:02:11]  Oh, good.
[03:02:13]  Well, what I'm calling about is, you know, people call in and they bash Trump.
[03:02:21]  The man can't turn his head the wrong way without the Democrats wanting to impeach him, take him to court.
[03:02:31]  The Democrats are acting like a bunch of spoiled brats.
[03:02:37]  And the way they acted at the State of the Union address the other night, some of them should have been taken out.
[03:02:45]  I think Al Green was let out, which he never should have been allowed in as to what had happened the last time.