CSPAN - Washington Journal 03/16/2026
Aired: 2026-03-16
Duration: 03:18:59


=== Trump Demands Warships (04:13) ===

[00:00:00]  Saturday on the week ahead in Congress, including Senator Mark Wayne Mullen's confirmation hearing as Homeland Security Director.
[00:00:06]  Also, Bob Crawford, a bassist for the folk rock band the Avitt Brothers, discusses his new book on the post-presidency life of John Quincy Adams.
[00:00:15]  C-SPAN's Washington Journal is next.
[00:00:17]  Join the conversation.
[00:00:29]  Good morning.
[00:00:30]  It's Monday, March 16th.
[00:00:32]  President Trump said this weekend that the United States may strike Iran's Karg Island again following earlier attacks he described as having, quote, totally demolished much of the country's key oil export hub.
[00:00:44]  Iran's foreign minister said Tehran has not asked for a ceasefire and will fight, quote, as long as it takes.
[00:00:51]  The administration is preparing to announce a coalition to escort commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz as oil markets remain volatile.
[00:01:00]  This morning, we're asking, do you approve or disapprove of President Trump's handling of the Iran conflict?
[00:01:06]  Here are the numbers.
[00:01:07]  Democrats, 202-748-8000.
[00:01:10]  Republicans, 202748, 8001.
[00:01:15]  Independents, 202748, 8002.
[00:01:18]  You can send a text to 2027488003.
[00:01:22]  Include your first name in your city-state.
[00:01:25]  And we're on social media, facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and X at C-SPANWJ.
[00:01:33]  Welcome to today's Washington Journal.
[00:01:35]  Start with a quick update from the Associated Press.
[00:01:39]  Trump calls for allies to help reopen Strait of Hormuz.
[00:01:43]  That's the headline.
[00:01:44]  It says, U.S. President Donald Trump said he has demanded that about seven countries send warships to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, saying the U.S. is negotiating with countries that are heavily reliant on Middle East crude to join a coalition to police the waterway.
[00:02:00]  Gulf Arab states, including UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain, reported new missile or drone attacks after Iran called for the evacuation of three major ports in the United Arab Emirates.
[00:02:13]  The first time it has threatened a neighboring country's non-U.S. assets, and the Dubai International Airport has gradually resumed some flights after a drone struck a fuel tank, causing a fire.
[00:02:26]  It says authorities said it was quickly contained and no injuries were reported.
[00:02:32]  Finally, the war has killed at least 1,300 people in Iran, at least 850 in Lebanon, 12 in Israel.
[00:02:39]  According to officials in those countries, at least 13 U.S. military members have been killed, including six in a plane crash in Iraq last week.
[00:02:48]  More than 800,000 people, nearly one out of every seven residents of Lebanon, have been displaced.
[00:02:55]  Well, let's take a look at President Trump last night on Air Force One talking about the coalition for the Strait of Hormuz.
[00:03:16]  And it's very hard to hear that given the sound of the jet, but this is Politico that has this article about it.
[00:03:24]  It says, Trump demands about seven countries join coalition to police Iran's Strait of Hormuz.
[00:03:30]  The president declined to name the countries the administration is negotiating with for protection for the strategic passage.
[00:03:38]  We are taking your calls this morning on the Iran conflict, whatever you would like to talk about.
[00:03:43]  We are here to listen and to hear your thoughts on that.
[00:03:47]  Democrats are on 2027488000.
[00:03:50]  Republicans 2027488001.
[00:03:54]  And independence 202748-8002.
[00:03:59]  We also have our Facebook here.
[00:04:05]  This is a posting that says, I approve Iranian people are needing help.

=== Spending on Health Care (15:13) ===

[00:04:13]  Michael Patrick says this, citizens of the U.S. have argued over the impact of Trump's presidency on the international order.
[00:04:19]  Some have argued that, quote, America is respected again.
[00:04:23]  However, considering the lack of response among our traditional allies in this conflict, it's clear that, at least with the countries in NATO, these countries don't want anything to do with what's happening in Iran.
[00:04:35]  Does that show respect?
[00:04:38]  Let's talk to Shea, who is calling us from Fort Pierce, Florida.
[00:04:41]  Democrat, good morning.
[00:04:43]  Good morning, Mimi.
[00:04:45]  How you doing?
[00:04:46]  Good.
[00:04:47]  Good, good.
[00:04:48]  Yeah, I disapprove of this war.
[00:04:55]  America, I tell you, we're in a mess as it always already was with our health care and all that.
[00:05:03]  And now we're spending all these billions of dollars for a war that we're not God.
[00:05:11]  You know what I mean?
[00:05:14]  If he was defending our country that was really, you know, they've been talking for years and years and years about what they're going to do.
[00:05:24]  Yeah, they're supposed to talk tough because they're trying to defend their own country.
[00:05:29]  But we should have stayed out of that.
[00:05:32]  People don't have the subsidies for the health care that they're not even talking about, that they could have extended for poor people to help them with health care.
[00:05:44]  And it's not hit yet because they tried to be slick about it because when it's really going to hard hit the people in this country, it's after the midterms.
[00:05:54]  They're trying to just baby the loan.
[00:05:57]  And then after that, it's going to be terrible for people of health care here in America and other stuff that's going on.
[00:06:04]  I think all that money that could have helped our country and still put in more pain because of the all and all of that.
[00:06:12]  But we're not God.
[00:06:13]  We're not God.
[00:06:15]  And we're just killing folks and stuff.
[00:06:18]  That is not right.
[00:06:19]  All right, Shea.
[00:06:20]  And let's hear from the UN, U.S.'s ambassador to the UN, Michael Waltz.
[00:06:25]  He was on CNN talking about the security situation in the street.
[00:06:30]  80% of the oil coming out of the Gulf heads to Asia.
[00:06:36]  Only about 7, 8% heads to the Western Hemisphere.
[00:06:39]  And thank God for President Trump's energy dominance agenda.
[00:06:43]  Everything from opening up Anwar, new pipeline in Alaska, incentivizing fracking, what we're going to see come out of Venezuela and Guyana in the coming months and years.
[00:06:57]  This is why we have to be energy independent.
[00:06:59]  And I have to just say, it's a little rich coming from the progressive left, who has literally been at war against oil.
[00:07:07]  Literally, we're putting policies in place to drive up the price of oil in order to force Americans to buy EVs and go to wind and solar are now suddenly celebrating it or decrying the lack of it.
[00:07:20]  Like I said, it's a little bit rich.
[00:07:22]  We have the energy dominance in place.
[00:07:24]  But to your point on escorts, look, back in the 80s, under the tanker wars, then the last time Iran tried to constrain global energy supplies, you had French, United Kingdom, even Soviet Union forces in there escorting their tankers out that were heading to their markets.
[00:07:45]  And I think that's what President Trump is calling upon the world, saying the entire world is affected.
[00:07:50]  Iran can't hold your economies hostage.
[00:07:53]  And we certainly welcome, encourage, and even demand their participation to help their own economies.
[00:08:00]  And meanwhile, the U.S. military will continue to pound the Iranian military, their missile, boat, and drone forces to keep the straits open.
[00:08:13]  Wonder what you think about that.
[00:08:15]  Let's talk to Ronald, Republican, Troy, North Carolina.
[00:08:18]  Good morning.
[00:08:20]  Good morning.
[00:08:22]  I'm calling.
[00:08:23]  I think the attack, the Democrat Party has lost it.
[00:08:26]  They've offered a deeping.
[00:08:27]  And to me, it's like treason against our country, against Trump, treason against our nation, what they're doing to America, the Democrat Party, is wrong.
[00:08:40]  So how do you think President Trump is doing in handling this conflict in Iran?
[00:08:48]  I think you're doing fine considering what's going on over there.
[00:08:52]  All the people that's against him, all the nations don't want to do what they should do.
[00:08:59]  All right.
[00:09:01]  This is John, Independent, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
[00:09:04]  Go ahead, John.
[00:09:06]  I'm calling it.
[00:09:07]  Good day.
[00:09:08]  I would like to start off by saying very appreciative of C-SPAN and all his offers.
[00:09:19]  Sorry, John, are you still there?
[00:09:22]  Sorry, still here.
[00:09:23]  How do you think President Trump is doing in handling this?
[00:09:28]  It looks like we've got some feedback on the last—sorry, John.
[00:09:32]  I think he's doing fine.
[00:09:35]  I would like to.
[00:09:38]  Yeah, go ahead.
[00:09:39]  We can hear you now.
[00:09:42]  I would like to follow up with a word on Alan, Winter Park, Maine, Independent Line.
[00:09:55]  Go ahead, Alan.
[00:09:56]  Yes, good morning.
[00:09:57]  Thank you for C-SPAN.
[00:09:58]  It's so important when all this media consolidation is happening.
[00:10:02]  So thank you for Morning Journal.
[00:10:04]  I wanted to just mention that that old song, War, what is it good for?
[00:10:08]  Absolutely nothing.
[00:10:10]  But it is good for Raytheon.
[00:10:12]  It's good for Lockheed.
[00:10:14]  It's good for Beth Ironworks here in Maine.
[00:10:16]  It's good for all the money that's flowing to Susan Collins because she is the appropriations chair and is sending money to all these war machines.
[00:10:27]  And obviously, there's good union labor at building ships, but they could be building desalinization plants.
[00:10:33]  They could be building wind terminals.
[00:10:34]  They could be building solar panels.
[00:10:37]  The winners in this war are going to be Russia and China.
[00:10:40]  The European countries want to get away from oil for more security.
[00:10:44]  Where do they get the solar panels?
[00:10:46]  From China.
[00:10:48]  The high prices in the world market of oil are benefiting Russia and to the detriment of Ukraine.
[00:10:54]  It's going to let them extend the war against Ukraine longer.
[00:10:58]  Our president clearly has, there's some compromise on him from Russia.
[00:11:03]  So, Alan, let me ask you this.
[00:11:06]  The argument the administration is making is that it's China that is really dependent on that oil going through the Strait of Hormuz.
[00:11:12]  Do you think that they would be willing to send warships to secure it so that they could have access?
[00:11:19]  I don't believe so.
[00:11:20]  It's a good question, because they have huge reserves.
[00:11:23]  They've been building up their reserves.
[00:11:24]  We've been selling our reserves of oil off.
[00:11:27]  Also, China has been electrifying for so many years and wind power.
[00:11:32]  And they have obviously the largest electric car companies in the world.
[00:11:36]  They also have coal that they can get from other countries like Australia.
[00:11:43]  But they are building an electrification, so they don't need as much oil as they used to in the past.
[00:11:50]  I don't believe China will help.
[00:11:52]  China has been, we have been creating chaos.
[00:11:55]  China has been building things, and China will continue to build things in Africa, Roads Project.
[00:12:00]  In other words, we have totally destroyed with Trump.
[00:12:03]  Trump has totally destroyed the positive, the diploma, what do they call it, soft power that we used to have with USAID and the World Health Organization.
[00:12:13]  All these things that benefit people, that people look at us and say, thank you, United States.
[00:12:18]  And what we have done is just brought death and destruction.
[00:12:20]  Khomeini was a horrible man.
[00:12:22]  I don't want, I'm a Jewish member of the Jewish faith, and we have strong relations in Bangor here with our Muslim neighbors.
[00:12:32]  We had 500 people at an IFSDAR dinner in downtown Bangor on March 6th.
[00:12:39]  Just beautiful, wonderful feeling of joy and community.
[00:12:46]  I'm not in faith.
[00:12:48]  I support Israel, but I also support a two-state solution.
[00:12:50]  I don't support war or Netanyahu.
[00:12:53]  And he and Trump are two people that want to stay out of jail.
[00:12:58]  That's why they want to prolong wars.
[00:13:00]  All right, Ellen.
[00:13:00]  Let's talk to Kelly next.
[00:13:01]  A Democrat, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
[00:13:03]  Good morning.
[00:13:05]  Good morning.
[00:13:07]  Yes, both of the callers that have been on before me have had excellent points.
[00:13:12]  And yes, we need health care.
[00:13:14]  We need to spend our money on health care, not on foreign wars.
[00:13:18]  Netanyahu, he wants to go into Lebanon.
[00:13:22]  He wants to expand his region.
[00:13:24]  And all the Sunday shows just had, they didn't have any answers to why we are there.
[00:13:33]  Yet they're all bought and paid for by AIPAC.
[00:13:36]  It's horrible.
[00:13:37]  Look, I went back to work for my health care.
[00:13:42]  I had to go back to work because I needed my health care.
[00:13:46]  All of this money could be going towards our subsidies that we lost or making insurance affordable for people.
[00:13:56]  I think a lot of people are going to find that they're struggling because of that.
[00:13:59]  Like I said, I unretired and went back to work for my health care.
[00:14:05]  And Kelly is in Michigan.
[00:14:07]  There was that attack in Michigan.
[00:14:09]  This is NewsNation that FBI releases timeline of Michigan terrorist attack.
[00:14:15]  This is from two days ago.
[00:14:16]  It has provided further details of last Thursday's attack on the Temple Israel Synagogue in Michigan.
[00:14:25]  The alleged perpetrator, 41-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen born in Lebanon, he attacked the Temple, attacked Temple Israel.
[00:14:35]  It says that his two brothers, a niece and a nephew, were killed at their home in Lebanon in an airstrike during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
[00:14:43]  It says a special agent said that the attack was a ruthless act of violence.
[00:14:47]  He died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
[00:14:50]  Security guard was injured.
[00:14:51]  63 law enforcement officers were sent to the hospitals as a result of smoke inhalation.
[00:14:57]  And it also says that motive has not been determined.
[00:15:01]  It is not connected to a shooting in Old Dominion.
[00:15:04]  I'll give you more information if I can find later information on that.
[00:15:08]  Here's Mark, Tennessee, Independent Line.
[00:15:10]  Good morning.
[00:15:12]  Good morning.
[00:15:12]  How are you doing?
[00:15:13]  Good.
[00:15:16]  Donald Trump has made a mess out of this.
[00:15:19]  He has just run off all of our allies, down NATO, and now he's handed us over to China and Russia.
[00:15:30]  I mean, that's just common sense.
[00:15:33]  And what people don't realize is this started in 1953 with Eisenhower.
[00:15:39]  This didn't start in the 1980s with Jimmy Carter.
[00:15:46]  So, how do you think the president should be handling this?
[00:15:50]  I mean, I think I heard you said that you are against the war or the conflict going on now.
[00:16:00]  What do you think the president should do?
[00:16:03]  Well, first of all, he should have never ripped up the agreement that Obama had with them.
[00:16:09]  That's where he made his first mistake.
[00:16:12]  Now, granted, like I say, this has been broiling since 1953.
[00:16:17]  People like to believe it started in 1979, but it didn't.
[00:16:23]  But it was going to have to happen eventually anyway, because what we did prior.
[00:16:30]  Like I say, this goes back to Eisenhower in 1953 when we took away their right to vote.
[00:16:37]  We took and gave him the dictator who treated them brutally, and everybody's had their picture taken with him.
[00:16:44]  Kennedy, Nixon armed him to the teeth.
[00:16:48]  And poor old Carter just ended up holding the bag.
[00:16:54]  All right.
[00:16:55]  And this is Fox News.
[00:16:57]  It says, Trump says Iran's military is decimated, but still not declaring the war over.
[00:17:02]  U.S.-Israeli strikes continued to bombard the Iranian capital as fears of a global energy crisis rose Monday.
[00:17:08]  President Trump told reporters Sunday night that even though Iran's military has been decimated in the war, he was still not declaring it over.
[00:17:18]  And this is what Doug says on Facebook.
[00:17:21]  I'm going to judge it by the longer-term results as opposed to this relatively early stage.
[00:17:27]  The military, of course, is performing extremely well.
[00:17:30]  And the simple fact is the decades-long and recently very heightened threat from the regime had to be dealt with soon.
[00:17:37]  But I'm never comfortable with this kind of massive action, hoping for the best.
[00:17:42]  See, take a look at Senator Mark Warner.
[00:17:45]  He is the top Democrat on the intelligence committee.
[00:17:48]  He was on CBS's Face the Nation talking about threats within the country.
[00:17:54]  Under this FBI director, Cash Battelle, he has fired many of the top counterterrorism folks, counter-espionage folks.
[00:18:03]  And he has taken, and I reported this many times, close to a third of our FBI officers off doing counterterrorism or doing sex crimes and put them on immigration enforcement.
[00:18:18]  I knew this was going to come back and bite us.
[00:18:19]  And I believe, while there may not be a direct relationship here, we know in all of the offices they've taken these FBI agents off their critical cases and put them on immigration enforcement.
[00:18:34]  I think that was a mistake.
[00:18:35]  I want to find out how this guy was able to still be on the loose.
[00:18:40]  And we've got to get an investigation, but we've got to get an FBI that is back focused on protecting the homeland and preventing, whether it be terrorist or espionage taking place.
[00:18:50]  At this point, are you aware of any credible threats to the homeland?
[00:18:56]  I have not been briefed in the last few days on an additional credible threat.
[00:19:00]  But this, let's put it like this.
[00:19:03]  These are the things you have to plan for if you are planning on going to war on a war of choice.
[00:19:10]  This is a war of choice.
[00:19:14]  And we are taking your calls.
[00:19:16]  Numbers are on your screen.
[00:19:17]  You can go ahead and call now.
[00:19:19]  We will talk to Larry, West Bloomfield, Michigan, Independent Line.
[00:19:22]  Go ahead, Larry.
[00:19:24]  Thank you for taking my call.

=== War of Survival Debate (16:10) ===

[00:19:27]  First, the thing about West Bloomfield: it is a city where everybody lives among everybody.
[00:19:37]  Jews live among Muslims who live among Jews and Christians and Hindus.
[00:19:45]  I mean, everybody just lives together.
[00:19:47]  We couldn't believe that an incident like this could happen, and we were absolutely horrified and shocked because we don't think of ourselves as homogenous.
[00:19:57]  We just are.
[00:19:59]  And the other thing I'd like to say is that people don't generally recognize this, but the military rank and file, the soldiers themselves, the seamen, airmen, they actually have their own order for commanders.
[00:20:19]  And if anybody has ever earned the Blue Falcon, I'm sorry, the Blue Falcon more than Donald Trump, I'd like to know who it was.
[00:20:31]  Donald Trump is absolutely probably the only president who has actually earned the Blue Falcon.
[00:20:38]  Thank you very much.
[00:20:40]  And Larry was in Michigan.
[00:20:42]  This is what the BBC says about that synagogue attack.
[00:20:48]  I'll get that for you later.
[00:20:50]  Here is Edward, New York City, Republican line.
[00:20:53]  Go ahead, Edward.
[00:20:56]  Oh, yes.
[00:20:56]  Hi.
[00:20:57]  Thank you so much.
[00:20:57]  And thank you for C-SPEN for being there all these years, doing wonderful things.
[00:21:02]  To answer your question, I do support President Trump.
[00:21:06]  I have to say, he's changed the nature of the presidency here.
[00:21:11]  And the U.S. has now become the dominant power in the Middle East.
[00:21:16]  And unfortunately, we've suffered over many, many years going back certainly to the taking of the hostages in 79.
[00:21:25]  But they've kicked the can down the road.
[00:21:28]  I mean, Reagan did in 1987 take action in the Strait of Hermuz, and that was a great thing.
[00:21:37]  But since then, we've been in this world of globalism, of allies and partners, quote unquote.
[00:21:45]  And we see how weak they are actually in Europe.
[00:21:48]  They've moved away from fossil fuel energy, and they've been concentrating on wind power and all of these solar, these kinds of things.
[00:21:55]  But the reality is 30 years ago, 35 years ago, the world was running about 70% almost on fossil fuels.
[00:22:03]  And today they're running on 70% of fossil fuels, so nothing really has changed.
[00:22:07]  So the whole idea of energy security is critical.
[00:22:10]  Now, Carg Island is very interesting because he destroyed the military facilities there, but preserved the oil.
[00:22:20]  And he's using that now as a bargaining ship.
[00:22:22]  My sense is he'll send the Marines in there to seize the place.
[00:22:25]  95% of the time.
[00:22:26]  Now, Edward, please.
[00:22:27]  Leah, let's talk about Carg Island and sending the Marines.
[00:22:30]  If, as you say, the Marines are going to be on that island, it is very close to Iran.
[00:22:37]  So all they need to do is lob missiles and kill the Marines that might be stationed there.
[00:22:43]  What do you think of that?
[00:22:46]  That's a possibility.
[00:22:48]  And in fact, it's a concern of mine, obviously, because Iran still has command and control and facilities, and they're launching drones.
[00:22:58]  And we're struggling right now to defend against those drones.
[00:23:01]  So there's a lot of moving parts here, and I can't really say what's going to happen.
[00:23:06]  The last thing I'll say, though, my main concern is the war would be fought by American soldiers in the towns coming from the towns, the National Guard.
[00:23:18]  And when I was in Vietnam as a combat Marine officer, the draft created all kinds of problems.
[00:23:25]  Well, when the people that are going to the Middle East, most of the people that have been killed so far, are National Guard.
[00:23:34]  And when you call up the National Guard and deploy, quote unquote, deploy them to places.
[00:23:39]  And when they deploy them, they don't really tell us where they're going.
[00:23:42]  You're ripping families apart.
[00:23:45]  You're impacting the local community economies.
[00:23:49]  It's an awful thing.
[00:23:50]  So, what are the options, Edward?
[00:23:53]  If it's not the draft, it's not the National Guard, who do you send?
[00:23:58]  This is the problem because the American Army is only about 420,000 strong, and only about 10 to 20 percent of those are combat troops.
[00:24:07]  So, the U.S. Army is really a small army compared to our adversaries.
[00:24:12]  This is a real issue, and to put 500 or 600,000 people in Iran is just out of the question.
[00:24:19]  So, that's my real concern.
[00:24:21]  We've stopped kicking the can down the road.
[00:24:24]  We're going after this crazy theocracy with an SS-like IRGC.
[00:24:29]  Okay, it's the Nazi model.
[00:24:32]  Do you think we can replace, I mean, we can displace the IRGC with this war, or do you think they'll still be in power?
[00:24:41]  We're dealing with, in my opinion, a crazy theocracy, which embraces just the right wing.
[00:24:51]  And you also have the conflict between the Shiites and the Syrians.
[00:24:55]  It's very, very complicated.
[00:24:56]  But we're not going to overturn these people.
[00:24:59]  It's going to take, I think, a long time to overturn that regime.
[00:25:03]  They have a monopoly on violence, and they'll continue to kill their people.
[00:25:07]  All right.
[00:25:07]  We're going to talk to Joseph now in California.
[00:25:10]  Democrat, good morning.
[00:25:13]  Hi.
[00:25:14]  Hi, Joseph.
[00:25:15]  You're on the air.
[00:25:16]  Oh, hi.
[00:25:17]  Yeah, Trump went into this war without thinking about any consequences.
[00:25:25]  He thought he would go in there, blow up a few things, and Iran would give up.
[00:25:31]  That was ridiculous.
[00:25:34]  Trump doesn't think one space ahead.
[00:25:40]  People talk about him playing 3D chess.
[00:25:43]  He's not even playing checkers.
[00:25:45]  He doesn't know what he's doing.
[00:25:47]  He's alienated our allies in Europe, and now he's crawling back to them and begging for their help.
[00:25:56]  If I was Europe, I'd tell him to forget it.
[00:26:01]  You started it, you finish it.
[00:26:06]  So here's what the New York Times, this is the front page of the business section.
[00:26:13]  I guess agreeing with Joseph, who says this: little was done to avoid known issues in the Strait.
[00:26:19]  It says geography and regional rivalries have prevented Gulf countries from finding a true alternative to using the Strait of Hormuz.
[00:26:30]  This is National Economic Council Chair Kevin Hassett.
[00:26:33]  He was on the Sunday shows yesterday predicting that rising gas prices will only be temporary.
[00:26:40]  The big problem right now would be energy prices, and we're watching and monitoring closely.
[00:26:44]  We're looking at things every day and seeing how quickly we progress.
[00:26:48]  The bottom line is, again, that the reason why futures markets for oil are dropping down towards 60 and even below 50 in the long run is that we expect that if Iran stops being this disruptive terrorist force in the Middle East, that there will be a boom in oil production and industrial production.
[00:27:06]  But think about the harm, the harm that this evil government has done to their own people.
[00:27:11]  Back in the 70s, before the revolution, Iran was the 17th largest economy of the world.
[00:27:17]  Now it's something like the 50th.
[00:27:19]  No one's going to defend their own country.
[00:27:20]  They've run the regime.
[00:27:21]  They've run their country into the program.
[00:27:23]  But the point is that I wanted to just say that the countries around them also suffer from the risk of having them go nuts and attack them.
[00:27:31]  And so we expect that the global economy is going to have a big positive shock as soon as this is over.
[00:27:36]  And we're still being briefed that it would be four to six weeks from the beginning and that we're ahead of schedule.
[00:27:42]  Do you approve or disapprove of President Trump's handling of the Iran conflict?
[00:27:46]  That's our question this morning on the Republican line in Manville, New Jersey.
[00:27:51]  Joe, you're on the air.
[00:27:53]  Well, yeah, I'll make a comment about the one caller who said that they should have never got rid of the deal that Obama had.
[00:28:01]  And I'm thinking that it's a good thing they got rid of that because that's why we're in a predicament we're in now.
[00:28:06]  They were giving them cash, and that's how they built up their military.
[00:28:11]  And they funded their proxies from that money.
[00:28:16]  Okay.
[00:28:18]  Jason, Zanesville, Ohio, Democrat, you're on the air.
[00:28:23]  Howdy.
[00:28:24]  I just want to say how much I oppose this war.
[00:28:28]  I think that President Trump dragging us into another potential forever war after we've seen what's happened in Afghanistan and Iraq is not only irresponsible, it's dangerous, and it's going to be deadly for men and women my age.
[00:28:46]  Jason, how old are you?
[00:28:48]  I am 20.
[00:28:50]  So the counter argument to that is it would be a lot worse if Iran got a nuclear weapon.
[00:28:57]  What do you think of that scenario of Iran being in possession of a nuclear weapon?
[00:29:02]  I don't believe we have anything to worry about regarding that.
[00:29:05]  We've heard that Iran was close to a nuclear weapon for years.
[00:29:09]  We had a deal in place during the Obama administration to keep them from enriching uranium and making a nuclear weapon, which was thrown away by the current president and his administration.
[00:29:23]  This just puts more people my age at risk.
[00:29:27]  So, but Jason, they have said they have threatened Israel to wipe Israel off the map.
[00:29:33]  Do you think that would be a problem?
[00:29:36]  I believe that would be a problem, but there is no good reason for the United States men and women to go die on a potential that there is no real proof would happen.
[00:29:49]  All right.
[00:29:50]  Jim is next.
[00:29:52]  In Crosswicks, New Jersey, Republican, you're on the air.
[00:29:57]  Actually, I meant to hit independent, but my view on us being in Iran and them being a crazy leadership, I don't think they're crazy at all.
[00:30:10]  I think that they talk a lot and they don't actually put themselves at risk.
[00:30:16]  They use proxies.
[00:30:18]  So they're not insane.
[00:30:19]  They're strategic.
[00:30:21]  And we're making a mistake by getting involved.
[00:30:26]  All right.
[00:30:27]  And Fran, Democrat, Jacksonville, Florida, you're on the air.
[00:30:32]  Yes, thank you.
[00:30:33]  I was listening to one of the people that called in ahead of me.
[00:30:37]  And I totally agree with the idea that this is totally on Donald Trump.
[00:30:45]  And I'm still concerned about why people still follow him.
[00:30:51]  He's never going to admit any wrongdoing or a mistake.
[00:30:57]  And the truth just isn't in him.
[00:31:00]  Every time he gets on camera, he says he doesn't know, which is a lie, or he'll give a real out-and-out lie.
[00:31:11]  And people still believe him.
[00:31:15]  Now, I heard the representative from Iran being interviewed over the weekend, and he was one of the people that came to the meeting.
[00:31:26]  He kept mentioning February 26, I guess that's when it was.
[00:31:32]  And I watched that meeting where they disagreed with some of the things that our country was asking them to do.
[00:31:41]  And so that was kind of a deal breaker.
[00:31:44]  But they left thinking that they were going to be meet the following Tuesday.
[00:31:49]  And this was like Thursday.
[00:31:52]  And then by the weekend, we had started bombing them.
[00:31:55]  And I'm thinking, like, well, wait a minute.
[00:31:57]  They already had arranged for another meeting.
[00:32:01]  And so that was a lie.
[00:32:04]  I mean, like, we just can't be trusted.
[00:32:06]  I am so embarrassed, so ashamed of my country.
[00:32:09]  And yes, I am a natural-born citizen.
[00:32:12]  I don't know what I have to take to the polls with me.
[00:32:15]  I just got a new passport.
[00:32:17]  But I mean, this is ridiculous.
[00:32:19]  Now he wants to be in charge forever.
[00:32:23]  I'm glad that I'm three-quarters of a century old and I won't be having to deal with him forever.
[00:32:29]  But I thought I had missed a rapture when I found out about this bombing.
[00:32:33]  All right, Fran.
[00:32:34]  And let us take a look at Iran's foreign minister.
[00:32:37]  He was on CBS's Face the Nation yesterday talking about President Trump saying that they are looking for a ceasefire.
[00:32:47]  No, we never asked for a ceasefire and we have never asked even for negotiation.
[00:32:53]  We are ready to defend ourselves as long as it takes.
[00:32:57]  And this is what we have done so far and we continue to do that until President Trump comes to the point that this is an illegal war with no victory and you know there are you know people being killed only because President Trump wants to have fun.
[00:33:27]  This is what he has said.
[00:33:28]  Have fun?
[00:33:29]  We are not yes, this is what he said that they are sinking ships and targeting different places because it is fun.
[00:33:40]  And the Secretary of War has said that there is no mercy and this is actually a war crime.
[00:33:53]  Even saying that is a war crime.
[00:33:56]  So this is a war of choice by President Trump and the United States and we are going to continue our self-defense.
[00:34:06]  Well that may be your position but sir, this is a war of survival for your government.
[00:34:13]  Minister, don't you have to negotiate and reach out either directly or through a third party?
[00:34:19]  No, it's not a war of survival.
[00:34:22]  We are stable and strong enough.
[00:34:25]  We are only defending our people from this act of aggression.
[00:34:33]  And we don't see any reason why we should talk with Americans because we were talking with them when they decided to attack us.
[00:34:43]  And that was for the second time.
[00:34:45]  There is no good experience talking with Americans.
[00:34:50]  We were talking.
[00:34:51]  So why they decided to attack us.
[00:34:52]  So what is good if we go back to talk once again?
[00:34:58]  Our question is if you approve or disapprove of President Trump's handling of the Iran conflict.
[00:35:03]  And this is what Juan says on Facebook.
[00:35:06]  He says, absolutely not.
[00:35:07]  This is turning out to be the biggest.
[00:35:09]  I told you so in history.
[00:35:10]  All of his generals told him this exact thing would happen.
[00:35:13]  Sure, everyone knows the U.S. military is the strongest on earth.
[00:35:17]  However, Iranians and their proxies are going to be playing a much different game that will not end by anyone yelling, it's over.
[00:35:23]  I wonder what you think of that.
[00:35:25]  We'll hear from Kevin in North Las Vegas, Nevada, Independent Line.
[00:35:29]  Go ahead, Kevin.
[00:35:30]  Sorry, Ken, Ken.
[00:35:32]  Yeah, Ken.
[00:35:34]  I would say I disapprove.

=== Escalation Trap Fears (15:07) ===

[00:35:37]  There doesn't seem to be any defined mission or a clear objective of any kind.
[00:35:42]  Are we just there to take out the news?
[00:35:44]  I mean, he's out there taking out half of their government, it seems like.
[00:35:49]  I came out and declared victory, and in the same breath, you're going to say it's just the beginning, and there's clearly no end in sight.
[00:35:57]  Had no evacuation plans, no plans for protecting just the general region, you know, before we get in there.
[00:36:05]  He could have at least strategized in some way.
[00:36:07]  I know you don't want to give out, you know, attack plans unlike before with signal chats and all that.
[00:36:17]  I think all this is just a distraction.
[00:36:19]  You know, I really think it's just to be used as a midterm emergency so they can take control of elections, they can delay elections.
[00:36:29]  I think you just saw there, Iran has no intention of calling for ceasefires or giving up.
[00:36:36]  They have no choice, but they're going to end up taking hostages before too long.
[00:36:40]  And we're going to be right back where we were.
[00:36:42]  This is all just to cover up Trump's Epstein involvement.
[00:36:45]  We're going to spend a billion dollars a day and average one soldier a day at this point for how long?
[00:36:53]  Can I think it's I want you to respond to Aaron, okay?
[00:36:56]  Listen to this.
[00:36:58]  This was on X. Except for the military who have lost their lives, this has been the most successful campaign known to any military industrial congressional complex known on earth.
[00:37:08]  We've done the opposite of the status quo.
[00:37:10]  We didn't waste 20 years of boots on the ground to hand it to the enemies.
[00:37:14]  What do you think of that?
[00:37:15]  That this is the most successful military operation.
[00:37:20]  I would say to Aaron that that sounds very familiar as to what we just heard six months ago, that it was a very successful plan.
[00:37:26]  We just obliterated their entire nuclear plan, right?
[00:37:29]  We set them back years.
[00:37:31]  And now six months later, they're within weeks again and again and again and again.
[00:37:35]  How many times do we have to hear that, Aaron?
[00:37:38]  That would be my response.
[00:37:39]  All right, let's talk to Cesar in Maryland, Republican.
[00:37:43]  Good morning.
[00:37:45]  Good morning.
[00:37:46]  How are you?
[00:37:46]  Good.
[00:37:46]  I wanted to make two points.
[00:37:49]  One on the immigration, but on this topic also we're speaking of, if I can.
[00:37:55]  I'm not total agreement with the war because nobody really wants war.
[00:38:02]  But at the same time, we need a strong hand like Trump to engage in this and to take action and do something.
[00:38:10]  If they've been saying for 47 years we've been basically being pushed over, why don't we do something about it?
[00:38:17]  It has to come to an end.
[00:38:19]  If we look at Bible's prophecy, we know that we can't allow the enemies to come together in the final days of Prophecy.
[00:38:28]  Caesar, when you say something needs to be done about it, and this has been a problem for 47 years, do you think that this is the right thing to do about it, in your opinion?
[00:38:38]  I believe so.
[00:38:40]  You know, we have to do something about the nuclear possibilities of having it.
[00:38:46]  We can't allow them to have any sort of nuclear bomb or anything because they will turn around and use it.
[00:38:52]  I mean, they cry death to America.
[00:38:54]  We're Americans.
[00:38:55]  Shouldn't that concern us?
[00:38:56]  And we know they're here in this country also.
[00:38:59]  Retaliation will be held here, too.
[00:39:01]  They've got about 400 kilograms, over 400 kilograms of enriched uranium that they would still keep.
[00:39:10]  Would you be willing to put American boots on the ground in order to seize that nuclear material so that they would not be able to create a nuclear bomb at the end of all this?
[00:39:22]  That's kind of hard to say.
[00:39:23]  I mean, I really don't want boots in the ground because I don't want this to extend more than it has to.
[00:39:29]  I think we have more powerful ways of getting to it.
[00:39:34]  But I think that's the ultimate way it's going to have to go in order to do this.
[00:39:38]  There's no way we can go there.
[00:39:40]  They're not willing to negotiate.
[00:39:42]  You know, like the other caller said, we were about to negotiate again, but they don't want no negotiations.
[00:39:46]  They just want to waste time and waste time on our part until we let go and we can't.
[00:39:54]  All right.
[00:39:55]  Let's talk to Michael Ardmore, Pennsylvania Democrat.
[00:39:59]  You're next.
[00:40:01]  Yes, I served in the Marine Corps from 1993 to 2001, and I was assigned to one of those Marine expeditionary units that has been deployed with 2,500 Marines.
[00:40:16]  I'm really concerned about that because our Secretary of Defense, I think, who's a total clown who doesn't even have, who has limited experience in these matters,
[00:40:31]  I wish we had a Secretary of Defense who was an admiral or a general who would know what they were doing in planning that mission, because I think it's completely unclear whether they want the Marines to be on the ground on Carg Island or they want them to be on the ship.
[00:40:50]  I think it's completely undefined and it is putting our troops in harm's way and at risk.
[00:40:58]  I'm really, really concerned about that.
[00:41:00]  So what, given your experience, Michael, with the Marines, what could those Marines be used for?
[00:41:09]  The best thing to do would be deterrence, I think.
[00:41:12]  But to throw them in the middle of Carg Island, that is just in the heat of battle with no backup.
[00:41:20]  You know, that is just sending them to the slaughterhouse.
[00:41:25]  And I don't know how our great Secretary of Defense and his well-defined experience came up with a plan like that.
[00:41:34]  I have no idea.
[00:41:37]  And I don't even know if he has consulted with the top admirals and generals who he has fired or let go people with their actual experience.
[00:41:48]  You know?
[00:41:49]  So let's look at that.
[00:41:52]  Michael, let me show you what the New York Times is saying about that.
[00:41:56]  So it says how a Marine unit in the Middle East could open new phase of Iran war.
[00:42:01]  The unit's arrival in the coming days will give the Pentagon the ability to quickly launch raids.
[00:42:08]  It says deployment at about 2,500 Marines represents a new phase as Iranian forces increase their attacks on the strait.
[00:42:17]  The unit officially known as the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, according to two U.S. defense officials, will be in an unusual position given the problem vexing the Pentagon.
[00:42:27]  The Iranian military's ability to mine the strait.
[00:42:31]  It says U.S. airstrikes have forced the Iranians to forego their larger naval vessels and deploy fast boats carrying mines that can evade aircraft.
[00:42:40]  These boats would likely launch from an archipelago of islands closer to the strait.
[00:42:46]  It says the Pentagon will be able to quickly launch raids onto the islands with infantry Marines who will have logistics and air support.
[00:42:54]  That's according to a retired senior defense officials.
[00:42:58]  That raises the risk of escalation.
[00:43:00]  President Trump has been quick to authorize smaller-scale military operations.
[00:43:05]  It says he announced on social media on Friday that the U.S. military had conducted a large bombing raid on Carg Island.
[00:43:12]  That's at the New York Times if you'd like to see the rest of that.
[00:43:15]  Here is from Fox News Sunday.
[00:43:18]  This is more from U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Michael Waltz on the potential for U.S. forces on the ground.
[00:43:27]  The Pentagon's job, Secretary Hegzeth, Chairman Dan Kane, is to provide options to the president, to have forces that are trained, equipped, in position, and ready for whatever he chooses to do as commander-in-chief.
[00:43:44]  President Trump is ever going to take options off the table.
[00:43:48]  And I can tell you, as a former special operator, we have forces that are dedicated to handling WMD all over the world, should we have to seize it from a rogue nation or otherwise.
[00:44:02]  But what I can tell you, I'm confident, is that this isn't going to be another 2003 Iraq.
[00:44:10]  There are not going to be hundreds of thousands of troops occupying urban areas somewhere.
[00:44:17]  You know, certainly not Tehran.
[00:44:19]  But if the president has to dedicate limited options, very focused, very targeted options, I'm confident that's something that the Pentagon, an option that the Pentagon can and will provide him.
[00:44:35]  Here is Harvey, Buffalo, New York, Independent Line.
[00:44:39]  Harvey, you're on the air.
[00:44:42]  Good morning.
[00:44:44]  My main thing is I think once you get into a conflict, this back and forth and not supporting our American military people overseas is a great negative.
[00:44:59]  Being a person that was in the Vietnam war era, you know, it was terrible that you couldn't come home in the uniform because people were so crazy about the war going on at that time.
[00:45:14]  We're in it.
[00:45:15]  We're going to stay in it.
[00:45:17]  We're going to do what we have to do there.
[00:45:19]  I am an independent, don't believe in war, but yet we're there.
[00:45:23]  And the worst thing is not to support our military people overseas and be negative about them being there and doing the job the president has asked them to do.
[00:45:35]  All right.
[00:45:36]  All right, Harvey.
[00:45:37]  And Sheila on X says, I don't approve of anything with Netanyahu's fingerprints on it.
[00:45:43]  Celtic Tree says this on X, leftists are mad at Donald for doing what Kamala, Joe, Hillary, and Barack all said that they would do, which is make sure that Iran wasn't able to threaten the region with nuclear weapons.
[00:45:58]  And this is Mikey in South Carolina.
[00:46:03]  Republican, good morning.
[00:46:06]  Hi, good morning.
[00:46:09]  Go ahead, Mikey.
[00:46:11]  All right, so how I feel about the war, I feel like what President Trump is doing is the correct thing.
[00:46:18]  There's a lot of conflict with Iran, and I do not approve on how they are trying to develop that nuclear weapon.
[00:46:25]  And I think we are doing the best we can to get that situation done.
[00:46:33]  I feel like President Trump is actually doing a very significant thing right now.
[00:46:37]  It's a lot of bad, it's a lot of flaws, but no one ever said it's going to be perfect.
[00:46:45]  And you're pleased with how it's going so far, Mikey?
[00:46:49]  So far, I feel like our Marines should be out there.
[00:46:54]  They're called the 911 Force.
[00:46:58]  Like, those should be the first responses.
[00:47:00]  They should be making sure those ships, those oil ships, are able to come out without Iran attacking them.
[00:47:07]  Iran had no right to blow up all those military bases we got in the Middle East.
[00:47:13]  They wanted war, so we're giving them war.
[00:47:16]  All right.
[00:47:17]  And this is the Military Times saying that the supplemental forces would include up to 5,000 personnel and several warships, including the USS Tripoli, which is on its way to the Middle East from its home port in Japan.
[00:47:33]  And Tom is in Mount Vernon, Ohio, Democrat.
[00:47:37]  Hi, Tom.
[00:47:40]  Hi, thanks for taking my call.
[00:47:43]  First of all, I love the troops.
[00:47:45]  I can't stand Donald Trump.
[00:47:47]  And these Republicans seem to have amnesia because he was in there for four years.
[00:47:52]  And if this was so important, why did he not do it then?
[00:47:56]  Why?
[00:47:57]  I want to ask him that question.
[00:47:59]  It's just like the inflation.
[00:48:01]  Trump mishandled COVID so badly that we had four years to try to recover from that mess.
[00:48:08]  But they blame everything on Biden, everything.
[00:48:12]  So like I say, if this is so important, why didn't he do it five, six, seven years ago?
[00:48:20]  So why do you think of Netanyahu?
[00:48:22]  Okay.
[00:48:23]  Yeah, I was going to say, why do you think he's doing it now?
[00:48:27]  Netanyahu and the Epstein files.
[00:48:30]  You don't think it could be because it's a bigger threat, that Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon, that this was the best chance to take out the proxies because Iran is weaker now.
[00:48:44]  He was on television every night.
[00:48:47]  We took out the nuclear bombs.
[00:48:49]  We took out the nuclear bombs.
[00:48:50]  We put them back on.
[00:48:52]  We had to do this.
[00:48:53]  And now six months later, we're in there with all our kids, like kids that are going to get friggin killed by that maniac.
[00:49:00]  I hate Trump.
[00:49:03]  Tony Milton, Massachusetts, Independent Line, you're on the air, Tony.
[00:49:09]  Yeah, good morning.
[00:49:10]  Thank you for having me on.
[00:49:13]  Unfortunately, a lot of people in this country don't realize that Iran has a radical regime that has been in existence for over 40 years.
[00:49:24]  And it's a very dangerous regime.
[00:49:25]  People don't realize that the capability that they have over the last, that they've built up over the last 40 years is very dangerous.
[00:49:33]  And I think not only did the U.S. recognize it in Israel, but so did the rest of the Arab world.
[00:49:39]  And people have to realize that this is a war that we can't avoid.
[00:49:43]  Unfortunately, it happened at this time.
[00:49:45]  Unfortunately, it happened under this president.
[00:49:49]  But it's a situation that this world has to deal with.
[00:49:53]  We cannot avoid this.
[00:49:54]  It's a regime that's built on murder, on lying, on cheating, on anything that they could do to push through their agenda of an ideology that goes against the world population.
[00:50:05]  Unfortunately, it's a war that we have to deal with.
[00:50:08]  And this has happened, and everybody hates wars.
[00:50:12]  I hate wars.
[00:50:13]  We all do.
[00:50:14]  But unfortunately, we've been living with this for 40 years.
[00:50:17]  This region has an opportunity now where all of the Arab countries have united against this country, and they're willing to go all the way to remove this regime.
[00:50:29]  So here's a question.
[00:50:30]  And Wedd on Facebook agrees with you.
[00:50:33]  He says this has been for almost 50 years, time to put an end to the largest terrorist state.
[00:50:39]  My question for you, Tony, is, is it possible to remove this regime?

=== Removing the Regime (15:56) ===

[00:50:45]  I think it is.
[00:50:46]  It's going to take, it's not going to take months.
[00:50:48]  It's going to take a few years.
[00:50:50]  I think you have an opportunity where not just the U.S. Marines or the U.S. Navy or the Air Force.
[00:50:56]  I think the rest of the Arab world understand that this has to happen.
[00:51:00]  How it happens, we have to leave it up to the professionals.
[00:51:04]  And I think it will happen over time.
[00:51:05]  It's not going to be months.
[00:51:06]  It could be a year, maybe two years.
[00:51:08]  I have no idea.
[00:51:09]  But I know it has to happen.
[00:51:10]  Okay, but so we've had experience with regime change, like in Iraq and Afghanistan.
[00:51:16]  So do you think it's going to be a repeat of those?
[00:51:20]  I don't think so.
[00:51:21]  I really don't.
[00:51:22]  I think people because I believe that the rest of the Arab world recognizes this has to happen.
[00:51:29]  If this country had nuclear weapons, just imagine what they would have done today.
[00:51:34]  I mean, this could happen, literally.
[00:51:36]  Honestly, this could happen.
[00:51:38]  The ideology that drives these people is very dangerous.
[00:51:43]  They're willing to die and kill millions of people with them thinking that there's another world or another heaven that they're going to.
[00:51:50]  They really believe this, and it's wrong.
[00:51:52]  And they're willing to kill not thousands, millions of people.
[00:51:55]  This is an ideology people have to understand exists and has to be removed, unfortunately, at a very expensive cost to lives, to Americans, to Arabs, to other Iranians, and to other Shiites.
[00:52:09]  There are a lot of Shiites that don't believe in this regime, but they have to live under them, and they have to be removed.
[00:52:16]  All right.
[00:52:16]  Let's talk to William in Tennessee.
[00:52:19]  Republican, good morning.
[00:52:21]  Good morning.
[00:52:22]  Thank you for all your hard, professional, personable, knowledgeable, hard work.
[00:52:29]  C-SPAN does a great job, and it gives us a good chance to see what people think.
[00:52:37]  It's sad that there's so many people that think that this is to cover up the F-STEAM thing.
[00:52:43]  That's delusional.
[00:52:45]  There's no evidence of that.
[00:52:48]  And the thing is, I like dogs, but if you have a rabid dog, you have to put it down.
[00:52:57]  And the Iranians are very intelligent people.
[00:53:00]  The students in the colleges are ready to create their own regime change, and it's going to take a military intervention to make that possible for them to get rid of these rabid people that are evil, wicked, maniacal.
[00:53:24]  So William, you mentioned the students.
[00:53:27]  And I mean, there's no resistance movement in Iran that is organized, that's armed, that is ready to take power in Iran, right?
[00:53:40]  Or what do you think of that?
[00:53:42]  I've talked to hundreds of Iranian students, and they're ready to change the thing.
[00:53:50]  We're going to have to arm those people.
[00:53:53]  We're going to have to give them light arms, and we're going to have to neutralize 25, or I'm sorry, 250,000 evil, wicked, maniacal people that are part of this regime that's intimidating 90 million people.
[00:54:13]  It's just like North Korea, which is the fourth largest army in the world.
[00:54:19]  This is probably number 15, but it's a threat because they're well on the way to a nuke that can reach other countries.
[00:54:35]  So we have to stop it.
[00:54:37]  All right, William, let's hear from Senator Corey Booker.
[00:54:40]  He's a Democrat.
[00:54:41]  He was on CNN's State of the Union talking about this topic.
[00:54:43]  Go ahead.
[00:54:44]  First of all, Democrats have tried multiple times to try to get TSA, CISA, the Coast Guard funded.
[00:54:52]  Republicans have refused time and time again to fund the whole agency fund.
[00:54:56]  They want the whole agency.
[00:54:57]  ICE is still out there doing reckless things in communities.
[00:55:00]  ICE is still arresting and detaining American citizens.
[00:55:03]  ICE is still having unmasked people jumped out of unmarked cars, abducting people from the streets, barreling into homes.
[00:55:10]  Even Americans, even veterans are being swept up in ISIS chaos.
[00:55:14]  I will not approve another dollar for ICE given all that they're doing.
[00:55:18]  But we should be funding those TSA agents that keep us safe, CISA Coast Guard.
[00:55:22]  And for Republicans to refuse to do it is unacceptable.
[00:55:26]  All right, Senator Corey Booker.
[00:55:27]  And I'll make one last point.
[00:55:28]  It's important, Jake.
[00:55:29]  They have cut the people out of FBI and other agencies that should be protecting our homeland.
[00:55:35]  This is a president that is not keeping America safer.
[00:55:37]  He's making it more dangerous, having lawless people in our communities doing lawless things.
[00:55:42]  And his operations overseas for the things that he's doing there not to be debated in Congress is outrageous.
[00:55:50]  And this is what the work of this week in Congress is going to be: focusing it back on the people's concerns, public safety, and the rising costs.
[00:55:58]  Taking your calls for another few minutes on the topic.
[00:56:01]  Do you approve or disapprove of President Trump's handling of the Iran conflict?
[00:56:05]  Talk to Jack, Arlington, Virginia.
[00:56:07]  Democrat, you're on the air, Jack.
[00:56:10]  Hey, good morning.
[00:56:11]  I 100% disapprove.
[00:56:14]  As a Democrat, I voted for Donald Trump because of his approach towards international relations.
[00:56:21]  So I'm, let's say, a seasoned former Marine.
[00:56:25]  So I really appreciated the Marines who've talked on the line.
[00:56:29]  And that I served in Iraq.
[00:56:31]  So this is from the 90s all the way to 2001, 2011.
[00:56:37]  I've served also in USAID in Iraq and in Afghanistan.
[00:56:42]  And I could tell you for sure, as someone who has a specialty in information operations, that a lot of your people who are like, you know, believe me, this, believe me, that.
[00:56:50]  No, no, no, speak to someone like myself or former CIA operators, operators, who know that this is made up, who knows that this is something that has been going on for decades and have pushed towards this idea of terrorism.
[00:57:05]  Now, on the question of Iran having nukes, no.
[00:57:09]  No matter what I say, I know that people have been convinced that this is true, that the Iranians have nuclear capability.
[00:57:16]  No, this is a message, a story, a Harry Potter book that is fantasy that's been created to drive what you see happening today.
[00:57:26]  Wait, wait, I'm not clear on what the fantasy is, Jack, that they are pursuing nuclear weapons.
[00:57:33]  The fantasy that they were pursuing nuclear weapons.
[00:57:36]  I would argue that they are pursuing nuclear weapons now.
[00:57:39]  They will be because no matter what they tried, nothing worked.
[00:57:44]  Nothing allowed them to have nuclear capability, just like the Israelis have, just like we have, in order to expand their society, in order to make Iran, normal Iran, work.
[00:57:57]  But now, now they must have it.
[00:57:59]  Now they must dirty bombs.
[00:58:02]  Okay, so what are your thoughts about changing the regime?
[00:58:05]  Okay, so this is what Kat said on Facebook.
[00:58:08]  She said, I myself don't like war.
[00:58:10]  Nobody does, but Iran's been threatening us for years.
[00:58:13]  We need to put a stop to it, and Trump's doing that.
[00:58:16]  Yes, there's going to be casualties.
[00:58:17]  There always is.
[00:58:19]  She says she's praying for people in Israel and Iran.
[00:58:22]  She said, the people of Iran who want their regime taken care of so they can live peacefully together.
[00:58:29]  What do you think of that, that idea of changing this regime for the Iranian people?
[00:58:35]  Okay.
[00:58:37]  This is why I voted for Donald Trump as a Democrat.
[00:58:41]  It is because the idea of regime change requires a forever war.
[00:58:47]  It is not going to happen in Iran.
[00:58:49]  Now, like Carg Island, they've already rigged that whole island to explode.
[00:58:57]  And we're sitting here talking about sending Marines.
[00:59:00]  No, the idea of regime change is a forever war.
[00:59:03]  For what?
[00:59:03]  For Israelis?
[00:59:04]  I don't care about Israelis.
[00:59:06]  I don't care about Palestinians.
[00:59:07]  And so Israel could get greater territory?
[00:59:10]  What are you nuts?
[00:59:12]  No, regime change for what?
[00:59:13]  I do not need regime change.
[00:59:16]  I appreciated Donald Trump going to speak to Kim Jong-il.
[00:59:19]  That was one of the other reasons why I was like, oh, I'm going to vote for him a second time because that behavior was the correct behavior.
[00:59:25]  Russia, being friends with Russians, that's the correct behavior.
[00:59:29]  This idea of, oh, no, you can't be friends with these people because, well, the Israelis need this.
[00:59:34]  Screw the Israelis.
[00:59:35]  I don't them.
[00:59:38]  Why are we continuing with this nonsense?
[00:59:39]  Regime change?
[00:59:40]  Absolutely not.
[00:59:42]  It's not going to work.
[00:59:43]  This is going to happen for 20 years.
[00:59:45]  The Iranians have been practicing this for decades.
[00:59:49]  They knew we were coming.
[00:59:50]  So this idea of, oh, this is going to be over in six months, forget about it.
[00:59:53]  It's not going to happen.
[00:59:54]  Now you've made them harden.
[00:59:57]  Now you've made them go underground.
[00:59:58]  This is going to go on for 20, 25 years.
[01:00:01]  My daughters will not fight in this war.
[01:00:03]  This is stupid.
[01:00:05]  All right, Jack.
[01:00:05]  JR, Grove City, Ohio, Independent Line, you're on the air.
[01:00:10]  Yeah, I'm a son of a Vietnam veteran.
[01:00:14]  I was going to serve myself.
[01:00:16]  I graduated around the 2000 era when right before 9-11 happened.
[01:00:22]  So I would have been a soldier that would have literally been sent over to Iraq to hunt for weapons of mass destructions that they were claiming that they had at that point when literally we went over there.
[01:00:38]  We went through the whole change of the regime, as some of the callers are stating and stuff like that, to go ahead and to free the Iraqi people.
[01:00:51]  And I mean, that was a wonderful idea.
[01:00:53]  I understand it.
[01:00:55]  But at the same time, wasn't it really just George W. Bush cleaning up his daddy's mess that he had left when we literally went out of the Saudi Arabia war, everything else?
[01:01:09]  So, like, I do not agree with this in any way, shape, or form.
[01:01:14]  I have a 22-year-old son that is a special operations Marine that will literally be on the front lines if this war continues.
[01:01:27]  And it's not even an if this war continues.
[01:01:29]  This war is going to continue.
[01:01:31]  This is, like the last caller said, this is something that is literally a forever war.
[01:01:36]  This is a biblical war that has been going on and that will go on for probably the rest of our lives.
[01:01:44]  Do we have the means to keep up the bombing and everything else?
[01:01:50]  Yeah, we probably do.
[01:01:51]  But at what cost?
[01:01:52]  Are we going to bomb multiple schools?
[01:01:56]  Are we going to kill innocent people for what?
[01:02:01]  Like, what did Iran do to us at this moment that caused us to buddy up with Netanyahu, to buddy up with Israel, and then to go over and try to clean up a mess that we really have no reason to even be over there?
[01:02:17]  And like the other callers are saying, like, we should put boots on the ground and have a forever war.
[01:02:24]  Send your son or daughter over there.
[01:02:27]  And let's see how quick your opinion will change on if you think this should be a forever war.
[01:02:35]  Doug, Newport News, Virginia, Democrat, you're on the air, Doug.
[01:02:38]  Yeah, the other thing I don't understand is the American people want to whine because two protesters in this country get shot and killed.
[01:02:48]  Yet thousands are dying in Iran.
[01:02:52]  And we want to act like, oh, that's a terrible thing that we're doing.
[01:02:58]  Who's going to stop it?
[01:02:59]  When are they going to stop it?
[01:03:01]  If a nuke hit New York, I'll guarantee you this country would be rallied behind everybody.
[01:03:07]  This hate Trump needs to stop.
[01:03:10]  Okay, so, Doug, I want you to respond to Sylvia on Facebook, who said she completely disapproves.
[01:03:16]  Innocent people are being killed for no reason.
[01:03:19]  She says she still doesn't understand the point of this war.
[01:03:22]  So make the case for why you support this war.
[01:03:26]  Because these people have been supporting every terrorist group in the world.
[01:03:33]  Everybody knows it.
[01:03:34]  No president had the nerve to stand up against them.
[01:03:39]  Donald Trump did.
[01:03:42]  Give him some credit and back off this stupid thing about we hate Trump.
[01:03:47]  Oh, it's the Epstein files.
[01:03:49]  Has anybody ever asked the parents of these victims, the Epstein file, where they were when their kids were out of the country?
[01:03:58]  Would your mother let you disappear for a week?
[01:04:02]  So, Doug, do you approve of the way this conflict, this war is being handled?
[01:04:08]  What do you think of how it's being handled and how long do you think it's going to go on for?
[01:04:16]  The way I approve it, I did 30 years with the military.
[01:04:21]  This country needs to wake up, stand up, put on a uniform, go back to the draft, put everybody in the military for a change, and stop these whining.
[01:04:31]  We have to get this war done.
[01:04:34]  Who do you think backed the invasion on Israel?
[01:04:38]  All right.
[01:04:39]  Jay, Fort Worth, Texas, Independent Line, you're on the air.
[01:04:43]  Hey, good morning, America, all you beautiful people out there.
[01:04:46]  I have a few points I just wanted to make, and I'll try to make it real quick.
[01:04:49]  I do not support the war because we haven't been given any proof or evidence for us being over there.
[01:04:56]  We've heard multiple excuses from our commander in charge.
[01:05:01]  My thoughts are with our soldiers who's over there doing our due diligence.
[01:05:06]  My point is our president tore up the agreement that was in place by Obama to keep them from enriching uranium.
[01:05:16]  Secondly, he hasn't shown us any proof why he tore up that agreement, and now we're over there in the war.
[01:05:24]  Another point I wanted to make is we heard him.
[01:05:27]  We heard his voice in the rent saying, do anything that y'all can do, start a war or whatever.
[01:05:33]  I'm not saying his, I'm not quoting him exactly, but he clearly made that statement to go ahead and start a war.
[01:05:40]  And then he wrote it off saying he was just screaming at somebody that was not doing what they were supposed to do.
[01:05:44]  So I just want everybody to think about that.
[01:05:46]  Wait, wait, I didn't hear this.
[01:05:48]  What the president was saying, go start a war?
[01:05:53]  He made a comment.
[01:05:55]  Now, I know we got a lot of AI stuff going on, and I tried to look at it and verify it.
[01:06:00]  He made a comment where he was renting at somebody.
[01:06:03]  It sounded like he was very frustrated.
[01:06:05]  He said he didn't care what they did, start a war if they wanted to or whatever.
[01:06:09]  And then when he was asked about it later, he said he was just ranting at somebody that was doing something that they weren't supposed to do.
[01:06:16]  Now, this was a little while ago.
[01:06:17]  Look it up.
[01:06:18]  Okay.
[01:06:18]  If you don't believe me.
[01:06:19]  And last thing I wanted to say was, all I want to do is see some evidence or some proof of these things that he's alleged happening over in Iran.
[01:06:28]  And I would support him.
[01:06:29]  I would support him.
[01:06:30]  And I wanted to give my thoughts out to that American who came to tears because of his hatred for our president.
[01:06:35]  That's a crying shame that we have to have our man crying because he feels the president isn't doing a great job.

=== Avoiding Authoritarian Leadership (02:42) ===

[01:06:41]  Let's get back to truth and honesty.
[01:06:44]  Let's get away from authoritarian leadership.
[01:06:46]  Let's get to transitional, I mean transformational leadership.
[01:06:50]  God bless everybody.
[01:06:51]  All right, Jay.
[01:06:52]  And later at about 9.15 Eastern, we'll have a conversation with musician Bob Crawford of the rock folk rock band of the Abbott Brothers.
[01:07:01]  He turned his obsession with America's sixth president into a book.
[01:07:04]  It's called America's Founding Son, John Quincy Adams.
[01:07:08]  But first, after the break, we'll talk to Axios White House correspondent Mark Caputo with a preview of the week ahead at the White House as the Iran conflict enters its third week.
[01:07:18]  We'll be right back.
[01:07:26]  Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series.
[01:07:32]  Sunday with our guest Hall of Fame baseball player and best-selling author Cal Ripken Jr., who has authored and co-authored more than a dozen books, including The Only Way I Know, Get in the Game, and a series of children's books.
[01:07:46]  He joins our host, civic leader, best-selling author, and owner of the Baltimore Orioles, David Rubenstein.
[01:07:53]  I thought writing kids' books were a good way to broach certain subjects that might have been tough when you're kids or whatever else in the backdrop of a travel team, travel baseball team, because we all worry about things as kids, and it was a way to communicate a good message through books.
[01:08:10]  So I just enjoyed the process.
[01:08:12]  Watch America's Book Club with Cal Ripken Jr. Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific.
[01:08:20]  Only on C-SPAN.
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[01:09:13]  Washington Journal continues.
[01:09:16]  Welcome back to Washington Journal.
[01:09:17]  We're joined now by Mark Caputo.
[01:09:19]  He is White House reporter for Axios.
[01:09:21]  Mark, welcome to the program.
[01:09:23]  Thanks for having me.

=== Shifting Conflict Justifications (15:14) ===

[01:09:24]  So the war in Iran is at its entering its third week.
[01:09:30]  What is the mood?
[01:09:32]  What's the feeling inside the White House right now?
[01:09:35]  I think both optimism, frustration, and concern at the same time.
[01:09:42]  Optimism because they have the data, they say, from the Pentagon that shows all of their targets are being hit.
[01:09:49]  And according to them, they're ahead of schedule.
[01:09:51]  Lots of missile silos and drone factories and the like being blown up.
[01:09:56]  And the Iranian Navy is at the bottom of the water.
[01:09:59]  So that's the optimism part.
[01:10:00]  The frustration is with a lot of the reporting that and a lot of the commentary on social media that indicates Trump might have gotten himself into a quagmire and what's being commonly called an escalation trap.
[01:10:14]  And then the concern is obviously the Strait of Hormuz, which has closed and causing gas prices, oil prices, and therefore gas prices to rise.
[01:10:23]  If you mix those three things together, I think that sums up the mood of Donald Trump and this White House revolves so strongly around Donald Trump that it also describes not just the White House, but also the administration itself.
[01:10:35]  Now, regarding the Strait of Hormuz and the rising gas prices, was there, according to your reporting, was there preparation for that?
[01:10:44]  Was there knowledge that, I mean, this is what Iran is going to do and this is what's going to be the result of it?
[01:10:51]  I mean, they say there was, and it would make sense that there was.
[01:10:54]  There is an open question about how carefully those plans were made, how widely they were shared, and how quickly a good plan was implemented.
[01:11:04]  And I don't really have answers to those questions.
[01:11:07]  But certainly there is some reporting out there that Trump is frustrated with sort of the pace of this being closed and the fact that other countries aren't helping out.
[01:11:17]  Now he has called on them.
[01:11:18]  He called on them Saturday to help out an international coalition.
[01:11:22]  And the White House tells us, told the Wall Street Journal first, that he expects, Donald Trump expects that he will be able to announce what they're calling a Hormuz coalition of other countries to help escort vessels through the Strait of Hormuz and get more oil to the global market.
[01:11:39]  And when we say escorting through the Strait of Hormuz, I mean it could be mined.
[01:11:45]  So how does that work militarily?
[01:11:47]  I mean, it doesn't help you to have a military escort if there's a mine in the water.
[01:11:54]  Well, certainly it doesn't help, especially if the military escort itself gets blown up.
[01:11:58]  And that's one of the great fears of this White House, perhaps of any defense department, is you don't want a multi-billion dollar piece of equipment sunk with a relatively cheap mine.
[01:12:09]  So exactly what this looks like and at what point they think it's clear is a great question.
[01:12:14]  One of the reasons I think you haven't seen more action faster and more of these ships running through the strait is out of this concern.
[01:12:22]  There are allegedly, or we are told there are minesweepers there.
[01:12:25]  There is also reporting that some old minesweepers that were in the region and were scheduled to be decommissioned were pulled out of the region right before the war.
[01:12:32]  And that's leading some people to think that the planning wasn't so great.
[01:12:36]  What we do know in the short term is there is this chess game now happening between Washington and Tehran.
[01:12:43]  There's some reporting was from CNN that Tehran has said will open the straits, or at least one official said from the Iranian government, that they'll open the strait, but only to cargo, oil cargo that is transacted in Shannon and not in U.S. dollars.
[01:13:01]  Most, if not all, petrol contracts and oil contracts are used with the U.S. dollars, which is sort of the world currency, so to speak.
[01:13:09]  And China, Iran, and a number of other countries, the BRICS countries, are trying to break that log jam.
[01:13:15]  And so Iran sees this as an opportunity to do that.
[01:13:19]  If you'd like to join our conversation with Mark Caputo, he's a White House reporter for Axios.
[01:13:23]  You can start calling in now.
[01:13:24]  Democrats are on 2027 for 88,000.
[01:13:27]  Republicans on 202-748-8001.
[01:13:30]  And Independents 202-748-8002.
[01:13:34]  Mark, there's a lot of conversation about the word war.
[01:13:38]  Sometimes we use war, sometimes we use conflict.
[01:13:41]  Is the White House calling this a war?
[01:13:44]  The White House officially isn't, but then the president does at different times.
[01:13:48]  So, you know, it's a war.
[01:13:51]  It's also a conflict.
[01:13:52]  And, you know, pick your poison here.
[01:13:54]  But the United States is spending something on the order or had spent on the order in the first 14 days or so, about $12 billion, expending all of his expensive ordnance, missiles, bombs, and spending it on the planes that have to take off and the personnel to staff the various military bases and the aircraft carriers and related strike groups.
[01:14:18]  So sure looks like a war to the people who are getting blown up, and it looks like a war to everyone else.
[01:14:23]  And whether the White House officially wants to admit that or not, who knows?
[01:14:27]  There is an irony, obviously, that Pete Hegseth was among those who insisted that the Department of Defense be renamed the War Department.
[01:14:34]  He constantly talks about warfighters, and now that war is going on, he's among those who are suggesting, like, well, this isn't war.
[01:14:40]  But then other times, he has said war is hell.
[01:14:43]  So whatever.
[01:14:45]  It is what it is.
[01:14:46]  It's a war.
[01:14:47]  It's a conflict.
[01:14:48]  And the ending of it is unclear at the moment.
[01:14:52]  And the justification is sometimes shifting.
[01:14:55]  At least that's what the criticism of the administration is.
[01:14:59]  I'm going to play you Secretary Hegseth and also so this is Secretary Hegseth from March 3rd and then President Trump last Monday about the justification.
[01:15:10]  So these are about a week apart and then I'll get your comment.
[01:15:14]  The campaign has seven times the intensity of Israel's previous operations against Iran during the 12-day war.
[01:15:20]  Seven times.
[01:15:23]  And as President Trump said, more and larger waves are coming.
[01:15:27]  We are just getting started.
[01:15:29]  We are accelerating, not decelerating.
[01:15:32]  Iran's capabilities are evaporating by the hour while American strength grows fiercer, smarter, and utterly dominant.
[01:15:39]  More bombers and more fighters are arriving just today.
[01:15:43]  Our country is doing really well.
[01:15:46]  I mean, at a level that nobody thought.
[01:15:48]  We took a little excursion because we felt we had to do that to get rid of some evil.
[01:15:53]  And I think you'll see it's going to be a short-term excursion.
[01:15:57]  How good is our military, right?
[01:16:01]  Amazing.
[01:16:04]  How good.
[01:16:05]  Short-term.
[01:16:08]  Short-term.
[01:16:14]  Comments.
[01:16:17]  I'm sorry, I didn't catch that first part of your question.
[01:16:20]  I was just saying, what do you make of those two comments from the Secretary and from the President?
[01:16:24]  Well, notably, the Secretary of War talked about the 12-day war and how this current conflict is expending more ordnance.
[01:16:31]  So by his own definition, this is a war.
[01:16:34]  I do have to say that one thing the administration has been consistent about, the president, not so much, but he said on the opening of the conflict of the war on February 28th that there are four objectives, military objectives for this action conflict, this war.
[01:16:53]  One was destroying the missiles and missile capability of Iran.
[01:16:57]  Two was sinking the Iranian Navy, just basically rendering it obsolete.
[01:17:03]  Three was eliminating its nuclear threat.
[01:17:06]  And four was eliminating Iran's ability and network of funding terrorist proxies in the region.
[01:17:12]  That was it.
[01:17:13]  Those are the four military objectives.
[01:17:15]  He also then laid out an additional one for the people of Iran to do to rise up and effectuate regime change.
[01:17:22]  Now, Trump at different times, he's taking reporter calls all the times.
[01:17:26]  He goes on stage and at press conferences and goes off message and off script and says what he wants.
[01:17:32]  But time and again, the administration refers back to those four objectives as the four things that will define this conflict and how the administration defines success in it and when it ultimately sort of withdraws.
[01:17:46]  And I would say withdraws from this phase of the conflict.
[01:17:49]  This is going to be probably an ongoing thing in Iran because, well, it has been for quite some time.
[01:17:55]  Obviously, the 12-day war was last week.
[01:17:57]  So when you look at the broader context of what Trump is trying to do, he's sort of laser focused, or the military, I should say, is laser focused on those things.
[01:18:07]  But as he sort of talked about an excursion, there are different things that crop up in war that change the tactical reality of the battle plan.
[01:18:18]  And as a result, you've got these two sort of major things that have arisen.
[01:18:22]  One is the Strait of Hormuz, which we've discussed.
[01:18:25]  The other is Karg Island.
[01:18:27]  It's 16 miles off the shore of Iran.
[01:18:29]  It handles about 90% of its oil.
[01:18:32]  And the president is eyeing whether to green light a takeover, a seizure, which would be boots on the ground of the small island of that strategically important and financially lucrative island for Iran, in the view of the Trump administration, that if they were able to take this, it would be sort of an economic knockout blow to Iran.
[01:18:55]  I mean, 90% of its oil, it produces about $78 billion a year in revenue.
[01:19:01]  That's half of the budget for Iran.
[01:19:05]  And if the United States controlled that, it would give the U.S. a leg up.
[01:19:09]  Now, this is one theory.
[01:19:10]  It doesn't mean the president is going to do that.
[01:19:12]  In the short term, we're told he's going to try to focus more on this Hormuz coalition and hope that that sort of works out and obviates the need to invade or to try to seize Carg Island.
[01:19:23]  But that's on the menu of options for Donald Trump.
[01:19:26]  And on Friday, he did announce and did show after green lighting a bombing raid on Parg Island where they took out, or appeared to take out the military installations there, but left all of the oil infrastructure.
[01:19:38]  So they're sort of softening it up for that inevitability if that actually happens.
[01:19:42]  If I shouldn't say inevitably, that possibility, if Donald Trump decides to move forward with that.
[01:19:47]  And, Mark, as far as you know, are the U.S. and the Israelis still on the same page as far as the aims of the war go and the timeline?
[01:19:57]  The United States and Israel have similar aims, but the Israelis seem, we are told, much more interested in regime change than the United States administration.
[01:20:09]  So Israel has told its local press, the press in Israel, that they have killed thousands of top military officials, IRGC officials, and regime officials in this effort to just attempt to decapitate and re-decapitate this government and this leadership structure they have in Iran.
[01:20:31]  One of the complicating things is what Iran calls this mosaic defense doctrine, which sort of diffuses and decentralizes a lot of power to survive decapitation strikes.
[01:20:42]  It makes it more difficult for them to have a clear chain of command and command and control, but it makes it sort of easier for them to operate in an environment like this where their Ayatollah was killed and 40 other leaders were killed and the opening day of the United States and Israel airstrikes on Iran.
[01:21:00]  At the same time, though, it enables them to sort of continue on in this environment.
[01:21:05]  And so far, I can't say that it's necessarily working.
[01:21:08]  I can't say it's not working, but the United States is having, or Trump has expressed some difficulty in having discussions with Iran, thinking that, well, you know, who are we really talking to?
[01:21:20]  Yes, they've appointed a new Ayatollah, but in the view of the United States, that Ayatollah doesn't really have half or nearly as much power as his father did.
[01:21:29]  Let's talk to callers now.
[01:21:30]  We'll start on the independent line in Pinehurst, North Carolina.
[01:21:33]  Patrick, you're on the air.
[01:21:36]  Yeah, good morning.
[01:21:38]  I've been watching your program now for the last several months, three of us here.
[01:21:45]  And I really enjoy hearing the comments from people.
[01:21:51]  As far as the conflict here that's going on now, I have one thought.
[01:22:02]  However, it becomes resolved, whether they change the regime or not, I think it's going to be difficult, okay, because these moolahs that it's like cocky roots is you kill 20 and 50 of them come back.
[01:22:20]  I think it's going to be very difficult.
[01:22:22]  But I would make it clear to Iran after this conflict, if they are still in power and they're still funding terrorists, that any strike from one of their proxies, we're not going after them.
[01:22:37]  We're coming back after you.
[01:22:40]  Your infrastructure, your electrical grid, communications, oil refineries, everything.
[01:22:48]  If that doesn't wake them up, nothing will.
[01:22:51]  Okay.
[01:22:52]  But we have to show these terrorists of will what real will is like?
[01:23:00]  And by the way, I'm unaffiliated.
[01:23:04]  I called on the independent line.
[01:23:07]  But Democrats, it's amazing.
[01:23:11]  They care more about their party than they do about the country.
[01:23:16]  All right, Patrick.
[01:23:17]  Mark, your response.
[01:23:21]  Don't hear much of I cover the White House, so I can tell you what the White House thinks and does, but he has his political opinions, and it's a free country.
[01:23:30]  Let's talk to Roderick, a Republican in Vancouver, Canada.
[01:23:33]  Good morning, Roderick.
[01:23:35]  Good morning.
[01:23:36]  I hope things are well in Washington, D.C. for you and your country people.
[01:23:42]  This is regarding the Iran conflict, my comments and questions.
[01:23:46]  I'd like to begin, if possible, with just a brief comparator between the Ukraine conflict and what's going on in Iran.
[01:23:57]  And I hope your guest can consider this question.
[01:24:02]  There's a need to have the Iranian, in quotes, problem dealt with, and the choices, policy choices of the United States government between effectively controlling the Black Sea where the Ukraine conflict is continuing or controlling the Persian Gulf should be thought of as what is more important here.
[01:24:25]  From a Canadian perspective, it's very clear that this war against Iran had to happen now, because the Trump administration, I would bet, is very concerned they may lose control of both houses of Congress in the autumn elections.

=== Ukraine and Iran Compared (07:42) ===

[01:24:39]  And if that happens, any ability to deal with Iran will disappear.
[01:24:44]  And the next president may be a weak, far weaker president than President Trump.
[01:24:48]  Why does this matter?
[01:24:49]  Because Iran is a space, a country capable of putting satellites into space since 2009.
[01:24:56]  Once you have that capability, it's only a short skip and a jump to putting bombs, warheads, bacterial weapons, chemical weapons into the United States from Iran.
[01:25:08]  So there had to be a way of stopping, or at least attempting to stop Iran now.
[01:25:12]  And fortunately for the world, Donald Trump has taken this on.
[01:25:16]  Now, my question regarding Iran mainly regards to Karg Island and the revenues that Iran obtains via its oil exports from that island and the extremely high percentage of revenues, money, that is received by the Iran Revolutionary Guard as a result of oil sales.
[01:25:38]  The Iranian government for decades has allowed the IRGC to receive direct funds from the sale of oil rather than not even through the Iranian government mechanisms.
[01:25:51]  So if Karg Island is successfully seized or blockaded by the United States Navy, this would eliminate potentially almost all of the IRGC's funding that it's using to fight back against the American and Israeli actions today.
[01:26:09]  So question number two, first one was regarding the effectively, shouldn't we end this Ukraine conflict by shouldn't you end it by ceasing providing weapons and intelligence to Ukraine?
[01:26:20]  So if that war ends, there can be focus on Iran instead.
[01:26:25]  But regarding the Iran conflict, is it, in your guest's view, likely that the United States will be making a policy decision to take Karg Island or blockade it?
[01:26:38]  And then I say that in the context of the United States Navy currently and since the beginning of the war, having five major surface combatants, three frigates and two destroyers in the Persian Gulf north of the Hormuz Strait.
[01:26:53]  And none of these vessels have received any hits or attacks successfully from the market.
[01:26:59]  So Roderick, let me give Mark a chance to respond to those points.
[01:27:03]  I can't answer about the Ukraine war.
[01:27:07]  It's a complicated matter.
[01:27:08]  One of the things the United States wants to do is keep a lot of its European allies to help out in the Hormuz Strait.
[01:27:13]  And the one thing I think the Europeans wouldn't appreciate is if the United States backed off of helping Ukraine.
[01:27:21]  And I'm sorry if I'm not answering your question fully there, but that's just sort of my thoughts on whether we would sort of pull completely out of there.
[01:27:28]  I don't think that's likely given the sort of complexities and the chessboard, the puzzles, the puzzle pieces.
[01:27:35]  As for Carg Island, you've laid out what a lot of people in the administration have seen and think that taking that island would really put a stranglehold on Iran and force them to the table.
[01:27:51]  It also could just change the complexion of the war.
[01:27:54]  That is, Iran has shown that it is willing to strike the United States' allies in the Gulf region and not wage full-on warfare, but certainly attack not only civilian targets such as hotels, but also various oil and fuel depots.
[01:28:13]  There's a pipeline in Saudi Arabia that runs from the Persian Gulf over to the Red Sea and can accept, I can't remember how many, maybe about 8 million barrels of oil a day out of the 20 million barrels of oil that are produced in the Persian Gulf.
[01:28:30]  And so there is a concern that if the United States decides to launch this action against Karg Island, that it will trigger an Iranian response to blow up that oil pipeline and wage just all-out economic warfare.
[01:28:43]  In addition to that, this is boots on the ground.
[01:28:46]  This would be boots on the ground doing that.
[01:28:48]  There would be, charitably speaking, a messaging complication for Donald Trump to start to explain and start to tell people about.
[01:28:56]  That having been said, very few conflicts, very few wars actually happen without boots on the ground.
[01:29:03]  And this is a war.
[01:29:03]  This is an armed conflict.
[01:29:05]  Having and controlling that island would expose the men, the military personnel on that island to incoming fire and attacks from the Iranian mainland.
[01:29:15]  One of the reasons, one of the reasons that this action hasn't been taken is we are still sort of halfway roughly.
[01:29:24]  Well, we're starting our third week.
[01:29:26]  We're two weeks into this war that was launched.
[01:29:30]  Trump initially said about four to six weeks.
[01:29:34]  So two weeks in, we've got two to three more weeks of this sort of this heavy phase of the conflict he laid out.
[01:29:41]  That means there are many more targets to attack, many more missile silos, missile launchers, drones, drone factories, drone storage facilities to make it safer for a United States military action such as that, such as seizing Carg Island to happen.
[01:29:59]  I can't comment on the likelihood of it.
[01:30:01]  It's Donald Trump.
[01:30:02]  Donald Trump prides himself on what he calls strategic ambiguity.
[01:30:07]  His critics just call it craziness, but it makes it hard to predict what he's going to do.
[01:30:12]  And one of the things I've learned is try not to predict what he plans to do because it's just sort of unclear.
[01:30:20]  And his administration has cautioned us.
[01:30:23]  The president, yeah, sure, has discussed this, but until Donald Trump decides to do it, and you'll know when he does it, it's not a fact until that happens.
[01:30:31]  Mark, I want to ask you about Vice President Vance.
[01:30:35]  Reporting indicates that he was a skeptical voice within the administration on this action.
[01:30:41]  They're going to be together and appearing together publicly for the first time since the beginning of this conflict.
[01:30:48]  I don't even know what to call it this afternoon.
[01:30:52]  So what can you tell us about that and the vice president's position?
[01:30:57]  I'm not privy to all of the private conversations, but there's been different reporting that both we at Axios have produced and other media has as well that indicate at different times the president was too often surrounded by people who told him what they thought he wanted to hear and at other times was given a lot of negative feedback or gut check moments like, hey, if you do this, this bad stuff is going to happen.
[01:31:25]  And Vance, being among the more skeptical about the use of military action, was among those who was more likely, we assume and we hear, to voice some of those opinions to tell President Trump, if you do this, there are going to be various problems.
[01:31:40]  But the degree to which JD Vance voices objections, how vociferous he was about it, how opposed he is to the current action right now isn't very clear.
[01:31:51]  My suspicion and some of my reporting indicate that everyone in the administration, while they don't like the fact that the Strait of Hormuz is closed and that the price of oil is going up, nevertheless see this as a success currently because of Iran's diminished or apparently diminished capabilities in striking out with both its missiles and its drones.
[01:32:14]  Glenn in Detroit, Line for Democrats, you're on the air.
[01:32:18]  Hello, how are you doing, Mimi, and to your guests?

=== Unlikely Conventional Invasion (03:22) ===

[01:32:21]  I'd like to know why is why people, how many citizens in Israel are going to send their sons and daughters?
[01:32:32]  Are they going to have boots on the ground?
[01:32:33]  Are they going to join the military and go to Iran and risk their lives?
[01:32:38]  Are they just going to send American soldiers?
[01:32:40]  That's one.
[01:32:41]  Two, I'd like to know why America continued to support Israel financially.
[01:32:46]  They have better health care than we do, better school systems than we do, and they have a better economy than we do.
[01:32:52]  We're supporting and maintaining their success as a country, something that we don't even experience ourselves.
[01:33:03]  I could answer the first one more easily than the second one.
[01:33:05]  The first question is, is Israel going to send its sons and daughters into war?
[01:33:10]  Absolutely.
[01:33:12]  There is a mandatory draft, the mandatory military service for most Israeli citizens, except for the conservative religious elite, which is a cause of friction within Israel.
[01:33:22]  And you will see, I can't say you will see.
[01:33:28]  A lot of indications are that Israel is preparing a ground war, an invasion of Lebanon to the north, because Hezbollah, the terrorist proxy of Iran, began firing missiles from Lebanon at Israel after the beginning of this war, and Israel is retaliating both with missiles and plans or has plans to move in to southern Lebanon.
[01:33:52]  As for an invasion of Iran itself, all indications are that's highly unlikely in the conventional sense.
[01:34:01]  The conventional sense is invasion, you have a massive force sort of taking the beaches or parachuting in and taking large sections of land.
[01:34:10]  That sort of boots on the ground invasion, whether by Israel or the United States in Iran, is unlikely.
[01:34:17]  Now, I'm saying unlikely, I'm not saying it's impossible.
[01:34:20]  The likely boots on the ground circumstance for Israel and the United States in Iran, as we've reported at Axios, the likelier, I should say, is having some sort of military force, special operators, special operations, special forces, going into very specifically chosen areas to find, to locate, to seize, to handle,
[01:34:47]  and to remove these alleged highly enriched uranium stockpiles that Iran has allegedly kept and produced in its effort or its desire to produce a nuclear weapon.
[01:35:00]  I'm saying allegedly, I'm just basing this on what our government and the Israeli government say.
[01:35:06]  That sort of operation is in the sort of distant future, is likely in the distant future, because they don't want to just parachute or fly in special forces, including scientists who would need to go along and perhaps even excavating equipment to dig out this stuff that had been bombed so much.
[01:35:24]  So it's a complicated endeavor, but it does entail a boots on the ground quality to it.
[01:35:31]  However, again, it's not that sort of conventional invasion force.
[01:35:35]  If you do see a more conventional invasion force, if you do see it, it would be at Carg Island, and that would be a lot smaller.

=== Stealing an Election (13:47) ===

[01:35:44]  Again, those are ifs and would-be's.
[01:35:46]  I'm talking likelihoods and probabilities.
[01:35:49]  Just defaulting to my previous comments about how difficult it is not only to predict Donald Trump, but to predict the course of any sort of conflict or war in a circumstance like this.
[01:35:58]  All right.
[01:35:59]  Mark Caputo, White House reporter for Axios.
[01:36:02]  His work is at axios.com.
[01:36:04]  Mark, thanks so much for joining us today.
[01:36:06]  Thank you.
[01:36:07]  And later this morning on the Washington Journal, musician Bob Crawford of the folk rock band The Abbott Brothers join us to talk about his new book, America's Founding Son, John Quincy Adams.
[01:36:19]  But first, it's more of your phone calls after the break in Open Forum.
[01:36:23]  Start calling in now.
[01:36:24]  The numbers are on your screen.
[01:36:42]  On this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb.
[01:36:46]  London-based writer Josh Ireland is the author of three books and ghostwriter of five others.
[01:36:52]  His latest is titled The Death of Trotsky, the true story of the plot to kill Stalin's greatest enemy.
[01:36:58]  According to Josh Ireland, Trotsky led two revolutions and a civil war in Russia in the first half of the 20th century.
[01:37:05]  Leon Trotsky died on August the 21st, 1940.
[01:37:09]  The day before, in Trotsky's house near Mexico City, a man named Ramon Mercator sunk an ice axe into Trotsky's skull.
[01:37:17]  He lived for 26 hours.
[01:37:19]  Mercator, who had several names, was a Soviet agent and had befriended Trotsky.
[01:37:24]  This was all the work of Stalin, Trotsky's arch enemy.
[01:37:28]  Josh Ireland's first sentence of chapter one asks this question.
[01:37:33]  When did Joseph Stalin decide to crush or destroy or kill Leon Trotsky?
[01:37:38]  His book tells the complicated story.
[01:37:41]  A new interview with author Josh Ireland about his book, The Death of Trotsky, the true story of the plot to kill Stalin's greatest enemy.
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[01:38:49]  He's a pretty likable guy as well.
[01:38:51]  Chris Coons and I are actually friends.
[01:38:52]  He votes wrong all the time, but we're actually friends.
[01:38:55]  A horrible secret that Scott and I have is that we actually respect each other.
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[01:39:00]  You two actually kind of like each other.
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[01:39:04]  It's nice to be with a member who knows what they're talking about.
[01:39:07]  Liz did agree to the civility, all right?
[01:39:09]  He owes my son $10 from a vet.
[01:39:12]  And he's never paid for it.
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[01:40:39]  Welcome back.
[01:40:39]  It's Open Forum.
[01:40:41]  Looking forward to hearing from you on the calls.
[01:40:44]  Real quick for your schedule today at 2 p.m. this afternoon.
[01:40:48]  We've got a discussion about Turkey and its influence in Middle Eastern affairs as the U.S. and Israel continue military operations against Iran.
[01:40:57]  It's hosted by the Brookings Institution.
[01:40:59]  That's live on C-SPAN 3 at 2 p.m.
[01:41:02]  And also today, members of Congress, local leaders, and business executives convene at the Congressional City Conference to discuss housing affordability, clean energy, and transportation, among other topics.
[01:41:15]  That's from the National League of Cities.
[01:41:17]  Live coverage starts at 3.30 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 3.
[01:41:22]  And that is also on the app C-SPANNOW and online at c-span.org.
[01:41:27]  When we'll get to your calls, we'll start with Ellen in Ohio, Line for Democrats.
[01:41:31]  Hi, Ellen.
[01:41:33]  Yeah, I just want to say that this war shouldn't have happened.
[01:41:38]  It's just something for Trump to show off.
[01:41:42]  And I think he started it for all his buddies.
[01:41:47]  Like the guy in northern North Korea in Saudi Arabia with the print button.
[01:41:54]  They're in there.
[01:41:56]  Chris Putin.
[01:41:58]  And I can't even say his name, the prime minister in Israel.
[01:42:03]  He's doing this for them until they will tell him he'll never end the war.
[01:42:09]  He'll go on and kill more babies, More school kids and all the people, 150 that they've killed, and they don't know if those were men or women or kids.
[01:42:22]  They killed him because he doesn't like what they look like.
[01:42:25]  I'm sorry.
[01:42:28]  I just wish we could get him out of there.
[01:42:30]  He doesn't know what he's doing or how to.
[01:42:34]  When he appointed people, the only people, he didn't appoint anybody that knew what they were doing.
[01:42:40]  He appointed people that would come to him, do what he wanted them to do.
[01:42:45]  And I hate to think that the Republican Senate and the House will just keep letting him do whatever he wants to do.
[01:42:54]  Thank you very much.
[01:42:56]  John in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, Republican, you're on the air.
[01:43:01]  Good morning.
[01:43:02]  Good morning.
[01:43:05]  I really, I feel like the election, the presidential election, was stolen.
[01:43:11]  There's different ways to steal an election.
[01:43:14]  You can print out phony paper ballots.
[01:43:17]  You could send people through the line two, three times.
[01:43:21]  You could lie to everybody at every single campaign stop about your agenda and what you're going to do as president.
[01:43:30]  And that's what our president, the current President Trump, did.
[01:43:34]  He went around to every campaign stop and he lied.
[01:43:38]  About what, John?
[01:43:40]  About what?
[01:43:41]  He lied about the forever wars.
[01:43:44]  There weren't going to be any more forever wars.
[01:43:46]  He lied about putting Americans first.
[01:43:49]  He took away our health care.
[01:43:51]  He promised us he wouldn't touch Medicare.
[01:43:54]  But he did.
[01:43:55]  And he just lied to everybody.
[01:43:58]  And I've never been more ashamed than to be an American than attacking a country that did not attack us, didn't do anything to us.
[01:44:08]  John, you're a Republican.
[01:44:09]  Did you vote for the president?
[01:44:11]  I did.
[01:44:13]  I'm ashamed that I did.
[01:44:15]  I should have seen through his lies.
[01:44:18]  And we're looking at right now this girls' school on Google Earth.
[01:44:23]  I would encourage you to look up the picture before we bomb the school.
[01:44:28]  Anybody could look at that picture and see that all the short people around the school in the picture were children.
[01:44:36]  They could easily see that that is a school.
[01:44:39]  So when they tell you, well, we had old intelligence.
[01:44:42]  Oh, the new intelligence didn't meet the old intelligence.
[01:44:45]  No, we hit that school on purpose.
[01:44:48]  And we don't know who to blame because the military will cover up for them till forevermore.
[01:44:55]  They lie.
[01:44:56]  I don't believe anything that comes across mainstream news, especially not Fox, because we have been systematically lied to since Trump was on the campaign trail.
[01:45:07]  How deep do you know those lies go?
[01:45:09]  I got to let you go because a spokesperson for the White House, Caroline Lovett, is approaching the microphone.
[01:45:15]  We're going to go ahead and listen in to what she's saying.
[01:45:24]  So the president looks forward to meeting with President Xi in China.
[01:45:30]  This is a trip I know he's long been looking forward to, and I know President Xi has been looking forward to welcoming President Trump.
[01:45:36]  As for the dates, as you heard from the president last night, there's a possibility the trip could be delayed.
[01:45:40]  We'll keep you posted on that, but these are leader-to-leader conversations that are happening.
[01:45:44]  So as soon as we have an update, we'll provide the new dates.
[01:45:47]  Caroline, President Trump says that other countries should now step up to safe partnerships and strength of poor rulers.
[01:45:54]  Why should other countries that were consulted about this war that are involved in this war now put their troops in harm's way in this fear?
[01:46:02]  Because these other countries are benefiting greatly from the United States military taking out the threat of Iran.
[01:46:08]  The rogue Iranian regime has long not just posed a threat to the United States of America, but of course to our Gulf and Arab partners in the region.
[01:46:15]  As you see, I believe Iran has struck more than 300 civilian targets in our Gulf, in the Gulf region.
[01:46:24]  If you think about Europe, their ballistic missile capability that the United States military is currently wiping out was a direct and imminent threat to our European allies as well as our bases in the region, which is why President Trump took this action in the first place.
[01:46:38]  So these countries are absolutely benefiting from ensuring that Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon.
[01:46:43]  This is something not just the United States, but the entire Western world has agreed with for many, many years.
[01:46:48]  So I think the President is absolutely right to call on these countries to do more to help the United States to reopen the Strait of Hermuz so that we can stop this terrorist regime from restricting the free flow of energy.
[01:47:00]  And the fact that they are doing so just underscores why President Trump needed to take this action in the first place.
[01:47:05]  President just told the UK a few days ago that he doesn't need airships, and now he says he does.
[01:47:11]  The president spoke on that last night.
[01:47:12]  He said that he wished the UK had stepped up sooner and quicker, but he continues to speak with our allies in Europe and is calling on them to do more, just as he did when he called on them to step up with respect to their defense spending in NATO.
[01:47:26]  He's calling them to do more here, and I think you'll see that come to fruition.
[01:47:29]  Why does the president feel like he needs 2,500 or so Marines in the Middle East right now?
[01:47:35]  I would defer you to the Pentagon on that troop movement, and it's not something I'm going to get ahead of the commander-in-chief on.
[01:47:41]  And look, I'm not going to get ahead of him on any options that may be on the table for the president.
[01:47:59]  Right now, the president is being very clear to NATO and to our allies in Europe what he wants them to do.
[01:48:05]  And again, I think you're going to see that come to fruition.
[01:48:07]  I would just add on one scheduling note later this afternoon, you'll see the president yourselves.
[01:48:13]  He just told me he wants to bring you all in for the Kennedy Center board meeting lunch, so you can get ready for that if you're part of the pool today.
[01:48:19]  And then, of course, at 3:30 this afternoon, he will be signing an executive order alongside the vice president to formally launch the Anti-Fraud Task Force, which will investigate fraud across the country.
[01:48:32]  The Vice President will be leading that.
[01:48:34]  So you'll see them in the Oval Office later today.
[01:48:36]  So I'll leave it to the President to answer the rest of your questions.
[01:48:38]  Yeah.
[01:48:39]  Where does that stand right now?
[01:48:40]  And has the President set a deadline that he wants to see China take any potential action?
[01:48:45]  No, I just answered the question.
[01:48:47]  It's a leader-to-leader conversation at this point.
[01:48:49]  President looks forward to visiting China.
[01:48:51]  The dates may be moved.
[01:48:52]  As Commander-in-Chief, it's his number one priority right now to ensure the continued success of this operation, Epic Fury.
[01:48:59]  So we'll keep you posted on the dates as soon as we can.
[01:49:01]  Thanks, guys.
[01:49:06]  That was the White House spokesperson, Caroline Levitt.
[01:49:09]  And we are in open forum.
[01:49:11]  So we'll go back to your calls now to Ralph, Nassau County, New York, Independent Line.
[01:49:15]  Hi, Ralph.
[01:49:17]  Yes, hi.
[01:49:19]  Hi, my name is Ralph, and I'm calling, I'm always amazed at how naive and uninformed large segments of the American public is.

=== DHS Confirmation Hearings (15:04) ===

[01:49:32]  To give a little bit of a background, I grew up in southside Jamaica, Queens.
[01:49:40]  Donald Trump lived in Jamaica Estates, literally across the tracks.
[01:49:48]  Back then during the Vietnam War, when my brother was drafted, those spoil-rich kids from Jamaica Estates got a free pass, i.e., Mr. Trump with his bone spurs.
[01:50:04]  Okay?
[01:50:04]  They're very quick to send other people's kids to war while their states stay nice and safe in the confines of their luxurious homes and what have you.
[01:50:18]  I remember walking through Jamaica Estates as a high school student going to a trap meet at Cunningham Park.
[01:50:29]  And when you walk through Jamaica Estates, As a young black man, you will swear you were somewhere in South Africa.
[01:50:39]  That's how segregated and how, I mean, you walk in through there.
[01:50:44]  I'm a high school student.
[01:50:45]  I'm just walking to get to my track meet.
[01:50:48]  You had private security, you had NYPD, you had neighborhood watch, and automatically, as a young man, you felt like you did something wrong.
[01:51:00]  Now, Donald Trump, I've been following this guy since he was a nobody.
[01:51:06]  I used to take the train to Hunter College, okay?
[01:51:10]  And I used to read the New York Post because of the sports section.
[01:51:15]  And when I'm finished with the sports section, I automatically turn to the page six.
[01:51:20]  And this guy would do anything to get on page six with the celebrities.
[01:51:26]  He's a nobody, and he's a con artist.
[01:51:29]  I also know of his father's history because his father got sued for discrimination in housing to regular working class folks that were looking for a place to stay.
[01:51:45]  They would go with the same identical qualifications, and nine out of ten, they would be refused where the white applicants would be given.
[01:51:58]  That's why he got sued by the federal government.
[01:52:02]  All right, Ralph, we've got to move on real quick.
[01:52:04]  Here's what Fortune magazine just published.
[01:52:07]  It says this.
[01:52:08]  Despite Greenland crisis, Trump suggests NATO owes him help on Iran war after U.S. support for Ukraine.
[01:52:17]  Quote, we've been very sweet.
[01:52:18]  The article says this.
[01:52:19]  Just two months ago, NATO was in the middle of an existential crisis over President Donald Trump's insistence that the U.S. take control of Greenland.
[01:52:26]  He threatened tariffs and refused to rule out military action, but eventually backed down.
[01:52:31]  It says this.
[01:52:32]  On Sunday, Trump demanded the alliance help him clear the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has blocked since the U.S. and Israel launched their war.
[01:52:41]  Quote, it's only appropriate that people who are the beneficiaries of the Strait will help to make sure that nothing bad happens there.
[01:52:49]  He told the Financial Times.
[01:52:50]  He also said that he could delay his summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
[01:52:56]  Quote, if there's no response or if it's a negative response, I think it will be very bad for the future of NATO.
[01:53:03]  That's at Fortune magazine.
[01:53:04]  If you'd like to read that, this is Beth in Chicago.
[01:53:07]  Democrat.
[01:53:07]  Hi, Beth.
[01:53:08]  Good morning, Mimi.
[01:53:09]  Thank you for taking my call.
[01:53:11]  Well, it's been a while since I've been able to get through.
[01:53:14]  So, first off, you just went over this article, which I'm hearing, but now I'm seeing differently because of your time delay.
[01:53:21]  Okay.
[01:53:23]  So, regarding this Iran situation, President Trump allowed B.B. Netanyahu to get us involved in this.
[01:53:32]  I understand when we were in 9-11 that our allies came and supported us.
[01:53:38]  But as much as he's been bad-mouthing them and since he started a conflict, I excuse the allies from getting involved.
[01:53:48]  They shouldn't put their people in harm's way for something that the United States and Israel decided to start on their own.
[01:53:56]  Yes, I understand that he is excited about going over to China because he's talked about it.
[01:54:03]  He wants to see their military on full display.
[01:54:07]  They're marching.
[01:54:08]  He likes that kind of showmanship.
[01:54:11]  Another thing regarding him lifting the embargoes from Russia oil, I think that is a huge mistake because all he's doing is allowing Putin to recoup his money so that he could go harder against the Ukrainian people.
[01:54:31]  And in the meantime, there are the talks that Moscow is giving intel to Iran, which is putting our troops in jeopardy.
[01:54:43]  And Donald Trump and his no-brain is not understanding or seeing this.
[01:54:50]  And he doesn't have the qualified people around him because he got rid of qualified people because he was worried that they weren't loyal to him when everybody should be loyal to our country.
[01:55:04]  And I'll stop talking.
[01:55:06]  All right.
[01:55:07]  And there was a caller at the very end of our first segment that talked about a recording of President Trump.
[01:55:15]  We found this, we did find a fact-check on that from Yahoo, that recordings of President Trump ranting he would start a war or let the country starve to avoid releasing Epstein files are not real.
[01:55:26]  That is AI audio.
[01:55:28]  So please be aware of that.
[01:55:31]  And please do check things for AI videos, AI audio.
[01:55:36]  They can get very good these days.
[01:55:38]  But please do fact-check that kind of information.
[01:55:42]  Bill, Bettendorf, Iowa, Independent Line, you're on the air.
[01:55:47]  Thank you for taking my call.
[01:55:51]  I've started watching C-SPAN.
[01:55:53]  I'm really excited and also interested in the different points of view.
[01:56:00]  I look at this war, and it's not an excursion, from a finance, economic point of view.
[01:56:08]  Why did we go into Venezuela?
[01:56:11]  Well, it was for the oil.
[01:56:13]  Why are we going into Iran?
[01:56:15]  Ultimately, I believe it's for the oil at the cost of troops being injured, U.S. troops.
[01:56:26]  And so to me, it can be spent any way you want politically, but we're making bad policy decisions when we can't spend money to help U.S. citizens, and we're benefiting the military business complex and also these oil barons in the United States, like in Texas,
[01:56:52]  where their stock prices are going through the roof because they are the real beneficiaries of war.
[01:57:01]  It's plain and simple.
[01:57:03]  You know, we were warned about this back before 1960.
[01:57:10]  It's a military business complex.
[01:57:12]  It's the oil companies that are benefiting, not the U.S. citizens.
[01:57:17]  Thank you.
[01:57:19]  And Gene is calling from Park Ridge, Illinois.
[01:57:21]  Republican.
[01:57:22]  Hi, Gene.
[01:57:23]  Hi.
[01:57:25]  My statement is this.
[01:57:28]  And I have two points.
[01:57:30]  Do not send troops on the ground in Iran.
[01:57:34]  We have a non-combat commander in charge right now.
[01:57:38]  Okay, that's my first point.
[01:57:40]  My second point is this.
[01:57:42]  Pete Hegseth is not a leader, okay?
[01:57:46]  He's a hard charger, but he belongs back on Fox.
[01:57:49]  So let's keep our heads.
[01:57:53]  Let's keep it an air and see campaign.
[01:57:56]  That's fine.
[01:57:57]  But do not send kids in there because you're going to have more caskets stacked up on our tarmac to bring home.
[01:58:06]  So are you, Gene, are you in favor of this war as long as it stays in the air and on sea and not on land?
[01:58:15]  We need to protect our ships at sea.
[01:58:19]  And if that's what it takes, that's fine.
[01:58:22]  But I'm not in favor of a ground action.
[01:58:26]  Okay, and that's just me.
[01:58:28]  The oil is always going to be a common de factor here.
[01:58:34]  All right, Gene.
[01:58:34]  And we will continue to take your calls in open forum.
[01:58:37]  But just hold on the line because we're going to just pause and talk to Mark Satter, who is a defense reporter for CQ Roll Call.
[01:58:45]  Mark, welcome to the program.
[01:58:47]  Thanks for having me.
[01:58:48]  Mark, let's start with Senator Mark Wayne Mullen.
[01:58:51]  He is going to be having his confirmation hearings.
[01:58:54]  It's scheduled for Wednesday for Homeland Security Secretary.
[01:58:58]  What are you watching?
[01:59:00]  And are you expecting any delays or issues with his confirmation?
[01:59:06]  We're not expecting any major issues with his confirmation.
[01:59:10]  I mean, he will surely get broad Republican support.
[01:59:13]  And a few Democrats have also signaled that they're on board with his nomination, including Senator John Fetterman from Pennsylvania.
[01:59:22]  So it's likely not a question of whether or not he'll get it, but more of a question of what he'll do.
[01:59:29]  One thing that is sure to come up is going to be the enforcement of immigration and how the Trump administration has handled that and how Mark Wayne Mullen will handle that as the head of DHS going forward.
[01:59:43]  And we will, I just let everybody know that we will have coverage of that confirmation hearing on Wednesday.
[01:59:50]  It is scheduled to start at 9.30 a.m.
[01:59:52]  We'll have that over for you on C-SPAN 3 in its entirety.
[01:59:57]  So is this, I mean, is the issue here that are Democrats saying that this will just be a different person, but the policy will remain the same?
[02:00:08]  And this is all happening amid that partial government shutdown of DH funding lapse?
[02:00:13]  Right, right.
[02:00:16]  I think that what's going to be interesting to watch here is that Mark Wayne Mullen, of course, was a senator.
[02:00:22]  He has these relationships in the Senate already.
[02:00:25]  He knows everybody there.
[02:00:27]  He knows people in the House.
[02:00:28]  Of course, it goes without saying he's a close ally of the administration and is well connected there.
[02:00:34]  So it may be more of a question of how will he work with the Senate in this case and the committee that is going to be conducting oversight of him.
[02:00:46]  I mean, one notable thread that may come up is that the committee chairman, Rand Paul, has been outspoken about the crackdown on illegal immigration.
[02:00:56]  He has said that the agencies have lost the public's trust.
[02:01:00]  There should be reforms.
[02:01:01]  There should be investigations.
[02:01:03]  So that will certainly come up.
[02:01:04]  It'll be really interesting to see how Senator Mullen, former Senator Mullen, handles that.
[02:01:10]  And regarding the laps and funding for DHS, we're hearing reports that TSA agents are quitting.
[02:01:16]  They have missed now a full paycheck.
[02:01:19]  What's the off-ramp here?
[02:01:21]  You know, negotiations are ongoing.
[02:01:24]  It has been now an entire month without DHS funding.
[02:01:29]  The dynamic currently is that Democrats and the Senate are negotiating directly with the White House.
[02:01:37]  Our reporting suggests there are a couple of sticking points remaining.
[02:01:41]  One is requiring agents to remove their masks, which has become an issue.
[02:01:48]  And the other is how warrants are issued and how they're used to enter homes.
[02:01:55]  The off-ramp is likely that those negotiations will come to fruition at some point.
[02:02:01]  Are you hearing about anything that's maybe moving the ball forward?
[02:02:06]  Is there anything that you think there might be a breakthrough anytime soon?
[02:02:11]  I think that the Mullen confirmation may help.
[02:02:15]  This is DHS-related.
[02:02:16]  It's kind of a fresh start.
[02:02:19]  That may shake things up a little bit.
[02:02:21]  And the other big story on Capitol Hill is this worldwide threats hearings.
[02:02:25]  That's going to happen in the House and the Senate intelligence committees.
[02:02:29]  That will be with the DNI head Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, FBI Director Kash Patel.
[02:02:36]  What are you going to be watching in those hearings?
[02:02:39]  I think those hearings are where the fireworks are going to be this week.
[02:02:44]  Iran will be top of mind for a lot of folks.
[02:02:47]  You know, with the intelligence chiefs there, there's going to be a question of what did we know before attacking Iran?
[02:02:54]  What was the state of their nuclear weapons program?
[02:02:56]  What is the state of their drone program?
[02:02:59]  That will be a really interesting through line.
[02:03:02]  A lot of those answers will probably be deferred to the closed session, but it'll be interesting to see what they say in public.
[02:03:10]  And will the attack on the Iranian school come up as far as intelligence failures leading to that being struck?
[02:03:19]  What do you think of that?
[02:03:21]  Certainly will.
[02:03:22]  You know, broad swath of Democrats in both chambers are calling for transparency on that, calling for an investigation.
[02:03:31]  I'm told that CENTCOM is working through that.
[02:03:36]  We'll see what that yields, but there is certainly concern about that on the Hill.
[02:03:41]  And we will have live coverage of both those hearings this week.
[02:03:44]  The first one is going to be in the House.
[02:03:46]  That's tomorrow, starting at 2 p.m.
[02:03:49]  We'll have live coverage on C-SPAN 3.
[02:03:51]  Finally, I just want to ask about the supplemental funding requests.
[02:03:56]  The Trump administration is expected to make a request of Congress sometime this week.
[02:04:01]  What are you hearing about how much?
[02:04:03]  When is that expected to hit?
[02:04:05]  What the reaction might be?
[02:04:10]  Yeah.
[02:04:11]  I mean, we are hearing from the administration now.
[02:04:13]  They've confirmed that they're spending about $1 billion per day on the war.
[02:04:20]  The $50 billion number has been tossed around for a supplemental, but we are in a wait-and-see period.
[02:04:26]  There are mixed signals coming from the administration at the moment.
[02:04:30]  On the Hill, lawmakers have signaled openness to move it forward if it comes.

=== Daily War Spending Billions (11:04) ===

[02:04:36]  Senate Majority Leader Thune has even said he may try to package other legislation along with it.
[02:04:41]  So we'll see.
[02:04:42]  All right.
[02:04:43]  Mark Satter, Defense Reporter for CQ Roll Call, thanks so much for joining us today.
[02:04:48]  Thank you.
[02:04:49]  Let's go back to the calls now on Open Forum.
[02:04:53]  Alita in North Carolina, Democrat, you're on the air.
[02:04:57]  Yes.
[02:04:58]  Well, good morning.
[02:04:59]  You know, I'm amazed what's wrong with the American people.
[02:05:03]  How on earth could they have voted for somebody who's a five-time felon, Mr. Trump?
[02:05:10]  He has no education.
[02:05:12]  We are not allowed to see his school records.
[02:05:17]  I think it is a terrible thing.
[02:05:21]  I don't understand the people of North Carolina or of America that they would vote for somebody who is not qualified for his position.
[02:05:33]  And that is really my input here of today.
[02:05:37]  I'm from the Netherlands, and I'm amazed what's going on in this country.
[02:05:42]  The American people are stupid.
[02:05:45]  They have no education whatsoever.
[02:05:47]  They voted for a man who is a criminal.
[02:05:51]  All right, Alida.
[02:05:52]  And on the Republican line in Oline, New York.
[02:05:54]  John, you're on the air.
[02:05:57]  Good morning.
[02:05:58]  I just want to say, God bless President Trump.
[02:06:03]  He is the best president that we have had.
[02:06:06]  Look at what he has done.
[02:06:08]  Not everyone is the best, but he has done a darn well good job.
[02:06:14]  And I am glad for one that I voted for the man.
[02:06:19]  Look what he's done for our country.
[02:06:22]  And all the haters just hate the man.
[02:06:25]  So, John, tell us about some of the things that you appreciate that President Trump has done.
[02:06:30]  Well, I mean, I don't remember how many people remember 9-11, but if he wouldn't have done what he's done, look at there's already terrorist cells in the country.
[02:06:41]  I mean, look what he's done.
[02:06:43]  He's stopped eight wars.
[02:06:46]  He's the gas prices were really good.
[02:06:50]  Where I live in New York, it's very expensive for gas.
[02:06:54]  It was actually going down.
[02:06:56]  Everything was going down and looking up until the last week or so, which is something that needed to be done.
[02:07:06]  Because look at the terrorist cells in our country.
[02:07:09]  Just look at the other day.
[02:07:11]  Two in one day.
[02:07:13]  All right, John.
[02:07:14]  Let's talk to Jim.
[02:07:15]  West Haven, Connecticut.
[02:07:17]  You're on the air.
[02:07:19]  Good morning.
[02:07:20]  Comments on comments on the Strait of Hormuz.
[02:07:26]  Someone in Washington forgot to take Geography 100 in college.
[02:07:30]  Ray Charles could have seen this coming.
[02:07:33]  Iran has got the cork in the bottle.
[02:07:36]  And will Donald find the corkscrew?
[02:07:40]  That's all I got to say.
[02:07:42]  And what do you think, Jim?
[02:07:43]  Do you think that this can be solved with the coalition of countries to defend the strait?
[02:07:50]  No.
[02:07:51]  No, we started this.
[02:07:52]  It's our fight.
[02:07:53]  We've got to figure it out.
[02:07:55]  All right.
[02:07:57]  John in Nebraska, Democrat, you're on the air.
[02:08:02]  Yeah, say, what I think we are is in, my name's John, and nice to your program.
[02:08:06]  I think we're in a situation, I don't care what anybody calls it, but we're at war.
[02:08:10]  War is a terrible, ugly thing.
[02:08:12]  We are committed to it.
[02:08:13]  Maybe nobody else is going to step in and help us.
[02:08:16]  We need to go in there and completely decimate the country, completely 100% take it over, destroy the Royal Guard, and we need to be put in charge, and then let the people decide what kind of government they want, and we need to get out of there because it is about oil.
[02:08:30]  Bottom line, it's about oil.
[02:08:32]  That's what I think is going on.
[02:08:33]  We should look at it that everybody on the other side of that muzzle is our enemy.
[02:08:37]  So you're saying do the same thing that we did in Iraq?
[02:08:41]  Oh, no.
[02:08:42]  We didn't do that.
[02:08:43]  What we did is we kind of skirted around the issue.
[02:08:45]  We ended up there for 20 years.
[02:08:46]  We should be able to get out.
[02:08:47]  We should do something along the lines of what we did in Japan.
[02:08:50]  That's what we should do.
[02:08:51]  And we need to go to war.
[02:08:52]  The American people are wanting a sanitary.
[02:08:56]  That was an atomic bomb, two atomic bombs dropped on.
[02:08:59]  Right.
[02:08:59]  I'm talking about the rebuilding.
[02:09:00]  You know, we need to go.
[02:09:02]  We don't need to go in there.
[02:09:03]  Yeah, we don't need to go in and make the place of glass, but we need to go in there and wage a war.
[02:09:07]  Hopefully, we don't have to get to a nuclear point.
[02:09:10]  But you don't know what's going on in that country.
[02:09:12]  And they may be able to set off a dirty bomb themselves.
[02:09:15]  But we need to go in there and take the country over and commit to war.
[02:09:18]  And war is a very ugly, terrible thing.
[02:09:21]  And the American people might not have the stomach for it.
[02:09:24]  And Trump just simply doesn't know that.
[02:09:26]  All right.
[02:09:27]  Here's another John.
[02:09:28]  This is time in Oklahoma.
[02:09:29]  Republican.
[02:09:30]  Go ahead, John.
[02:09:31]  Hello.
[02:09:32]  I just, a few weeks ago, we were talking about comparing the historical sense of Nazi Germany and saying, well, you can't call the guy Hitler yet.
[02:09:43]  But I just had some reflection on that.
[02:09:47]  My father was 12th Armored Division, which has a museum in Abilene.
[02:09:56]  It used to be associated with Abilene Christian.
[02:10:00]  And there's some letters around the house that he wrote from boot camp.
[02:10:08]  His training was abbreviated about, you know, almost like an ICE agent to go to World War II.
[02:10:14]  And there was this one letter saying how the news of the news of what was going on in Germany wasn't so prevalent.
[02:10:23]  And he suggested that while waiting in line for his GI issues, he suggested that if Hitler was in charge of this, it'd be operated a lot faster.
[02:10:37]  And I don't know if that'd be so true with Trump's and Hegset.
[02:10:42]  I think they're kind of more like cheerleaders than strategists.
[02:10:49]  And another thing, my father, from his reflections, one time he said, imagine, you know, the idea, he wasn't a denier, absolutely not, but to say, like, to camp 6 million people up, which was greater Chicago area at that time.
[02:11:10]  So, John, going back to what you said about Secretary Hegseth and President Trump, what makes you think that Secretary Hegseth is not a good strategist?
[02:11:19]  What leads you to that opinion?
[02:11:22]  He's a Fox News Entertainment host.
[02:11:25]  It's like David Letterman being put in charge of the, you know, except it's not as funny.
[02:11:32]  It's sad.
[02:11:33]  All right.
[02:11:34]  Let's talk to Lupe in Canoga Park, California, Independent Line.
[02:11:39]  Go ahead.
[02:11:40]  Hi, Mimi.
[02:11:41]  Hi.
[02:11:41]  Listen, this is for everybody that knows and understands right from wrong.
[02:11:48]  Not all seeds are God, but every soul belongs to the Lord.
[02:11:57]  And there are others that don't seem to understand the creation of God.
[02:12:03]  If they would understand it, they wouldn't have anything to worry about.
[02:12:08]  As it says in Matthew 24, not one stone shall be standing when he returns, because the one that comes on the sixth Trump is Satan, Antichrist.
[02:12:20]  The one that returns, the Almighty is on the seventh Trump.
[02:12:24]  So just remember that, everybody.
[02:12:26]  Calm down.
[02:12:27]  These things must happen.
[02:12:30]  Have a beautiful day.
[02:12:32]  Bye.
[02:12:32]  On the line for Democrats in Oceanside, California.
[02:12:35]  Richard, you're on the air.
[02:12:37]  Hi, Mimi.
[02:12:38]  Hi.
[02:12:40]  I'm calling today.
[02:12:45]  Richard?
[02:12:46]  Yeah?
[02:12:47]  Yeah.
[02:12:47]  Go ahead.
[02:12:48]  Sorry, I didn't hear you.
[02:12:49]  You're calling today about what?
[02:12:55]  Well, it seems like you've not got a good connection there, Richard, if you don't mind calling us back.
[02:13:01]  This is like the fourth time.
[02:13:03]  Oh, hi, Richard.
[02:13:04]  This is a new Richard in New York, Republican line.
[02:13:06]  Go ahead.
[02:13:08]  Yes.
[02:13:09]  So you're talking about the Iranian war, correct?
[02:13:12]  Well, it's an open forum.
[02:13:13]  So if you'd like to talk about that, that's fine.
[02:13:16]  Yeah, I don't know why all these people claim they're Americans are calling up.
[02:13:20]  This war was necessary, unfortunately.
[02:13:24]  You know, these Democrats who are ridiculous, most of them, you know, this has to be solved now.
[02:13:31]  You know, what are they, all these pundits call up all these strategies?
[02:13:36]  Unfortunately, this is on Trump's watch, and he's a guy who does something about it.
[02:13:41]  And then they say, what's the strategy?
[02:13:43]  The strategy is to give Iran back to the Iranian people so they can get their economy going and get rid of this radical, deadly regime they have in there now.
[02:13:54]  That's another point in doing this.
[02:13:57]  Also, get rid of the nuclear threat.
[02:13:59]  Also, get back the straits of Formus so oil can flow through there freely to the free economic world.
[02:14:07]  So, Richard, I want to ask you something because one of the criticisms is you cannot overturn a regime from the air, right?
[02:14:17]  You have to do it.
[02:14:17]  So, what do you do?
[02:14:19]  What do you do?
[02:14:19]  You've got to find some way to do it now.
[02:14:22]  You know, you've got to try.
[02:14:24]  What are you going to wait another 40 years?
[02:14:26]  And by the time they'll have nuclear capabilities and new technology, and then they can threaten the whole world.
[02:14:34]  You know, you got to try.
[02:14:37]  And this good strategy with the military.
[02:14:39]  I mean, Trump went in there and bombed out their infrastructure.
[02:14:42]  Now, the problem is the Straits of Forms, which is very difficult, but it's got to be figured out.
[02:14:49]  And we've got to get this regime out of Iran.
[02:14:52]  The Iranian people are very productive.
[02:14:55]  They're counterproductive at the moment.
[02:14:57]  And it's, you know, let's have a war on economics, a war for cancer.
[02:15:01]  And instead of spending all this money on military budgets, you know, see who can solve cancer, see who can be the best business world.
[02:15:09]  Wait, wait, wait, but we're spending a billion dollars a day on this war.
[02:15:13]  So you're saying we shouldn't be spending that much money, or we've got to spend it now.
[02:15:18]  No, no, I'm not saying that at all.
[02:15:20]  Hopefully, we can get rid of this Iranian regime so we won't have to spend it.
[02:15:24]  So we won't have to spend it later.
[02:15:26]  Got it.
[02:15:27]  Okay.
[02:15:27]  And that's open forum for today.
[02:15:30]  Coming up next, we've got a conversation with musician Bob Crawford of the folk rock band The Abbott Brothers.
[02:15:37]  He turned his obsession with America's sixth president into a new book.

=== Keeping Democracy in View (02:45) ===

[02:15:41]  It's called America's Founding Son.
[02:15:43]  John Quincy Adams.
[02:15:45]  talk to him about it after the break.
[02:16:09]  Democracy is always an unfinished creation.
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[02:16:25]  American democracy is bigger than any one person.
[02:16:27]  Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected.
[02:16:33]  We are still at our core a democracy.
[02:16:36]  This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom.
[02:16:40]  We bring you into the chamber, onto the Senate floor, inside the hearing room, up to the mic, and to the desk in the Oval Office.
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[02:18:20]  Washington Journal continues.
[02:18:23]  Welcome back to Washington Journal.
[02:18:24]  We're joined now by Bob Crawford.

=== John Quincy Adams Legacy (15:57) ===

[02:18:26]  He is a musician and a historian and the author of the book called America's Founding Son, John Quincy Adams from president to political maverick.
[02:18:35]  Bob, welcome to the program.
[02:18:37]  Thank you for having me, Mimi.
[02:18:38]  Tell us about your day job.
[02:18:40]  Okay, well, my day job is as the bassist for the Avet Brothers, and we've been around for 25 years.
[02:18:46]  We're, like you say, I think folk rock band, I think that's an okay way to describe us.
[02:18:51]  I think we're in that Americana genre.
[02:18:55]  For those who haven't heard us, you know, we started out upright bass, banjo, guitar, me and two brothers with those like Everly Brothers type harmonies.
[02:19:06]  And then over the years, we've become more of a rock band.
[02:19:10]  We have seven on stage now.
[02:19:12]  So you're not just a musician, you're a historian.
[02:19:14]  So tell us about that kind of combination.
[02:19:17]  Yeah, well, on the road, there's a lot of downtime.
[02:19:22]  And if you think about the rock musicians of the 60s, 70s, 80s, what did they do with their downtime?
[02:19:28]  They practiced the art of self-destruction.
[02:19:31]  Well, these days, myself, and I'm noticing a lot more musicians, we're making use of that time, working on other projects, exercising, trying to find like healthy food on the road.
[02:19:43]  But I found it, I love history.
[02:19:45]  I've always loved history.
[02:19:47]  And I used that time to research, and I wrote a book about John Quincy Adams.
[02:19:53]  And you were definitely going to talk about John Quincy Adams, but you said in a recent New York Times interview that you used to watch C-SPAN as a kid.
[02:20:00]  Well, back, yes, and in college in the 90s, I would watch C-SPAN.
[02:20:07]  And it's funny because when I said that, I had old friends from those days reach out to me and they were like, yeah, we used to watch C-SPAN too.
[02:20:16]  Like there was a college band that I was good friends with and they had a song that had a line about watching C-SPAN.
[02:20:25]  Well, let's talk about John Quincy Adams.
[02:20:27]  How did you become interested in him specifically and want to write a book about him?
[02:20:33]  Well, in the early 2000s, traveling around the country on tour.
[02:20:39]  At this point, we weren't in a tour bus yet.
[02:20:41]  We were in a conversion van.
[02:20:43]  I picked up a book by historian Sean Willence, The Rise of American Democracy from Jefferson to Lincoln.
[02:20:51]  It covers that period between Jefferson and Lincoln.
[02:20:54]  Look, we learn about the Revolution in school.
[02:20:58]  We learn about the Civil War.
[02:21:00]  But what happened in between?
[02:21:02]  And so when I the story that Willence told, as it unfolded, I was just amazed by all the characters and all the crises the nation went through at the time.
[02:21:13]  You call it America's Adolescence.
[02:21:15]  America's Tortured Adolescence.
[02:21:18]  And Adams, he was a character, a person who kept popping up in the narrative.
[02:21:24]  He is Monroe's Secretary of State.
[02:21:27]  He's the architect of the Monroe Doctrine.
[02:21:29]  He disappears from the narrative.
[02:21:31]  He comes back.
[02:21:31]  There's this election in 1824 that is really controversial.
[02:21:36]  Some say it was corrupt.
[02:21:38]  He has a failed one-term presidency.
[02:21:42]  You continue reading on, and then all of a sudden, he's in the House of Representatives.
[02:21:47]  And that was the moment I was like, I've never heard of a president after their presidency going into Congress.
[02:21:55]  And I was just hooked, and I couldn't believe that we as a nation don't understand more about his life.
[02:22:04]  Well, this book really focuses on John Quincy Adams' anti-slavery work.
[02:22:10]  How did he first get involved in the anti-slavery cause?
[02:22:15]  Well, so I'm sure a lot of your viewers know that the anti-slavery activists of the time, they were called abolitionists.
[02:22:23]  And they were a radical minority of the population.
[02:22:28]  And Adams found them to be wackos, right?
[02:22:33]  He always abhorred slavery, but he did not believe in their tactics.
[02:22:39]  And he did not believe that emancipation was possible.
[02:22:43]  So he thought they were kind of foolish.
[02:22:46]  But in 1836, Congress passed a rule in the House called the gag rule.
[02:22:52]  And you could not talk about slavery on the House floor.
[02:22:56]  Just because they didn't want to deal with it?
[02:22:58]  They don't want to hear about it.
[02:22:59]  People were getting paranoid about it.
[02:23:01]  It was uncomfortable.
[02:23:02]  See, First Amendment, you petition your government for a redress of grievances.
[02:23:06]  Back then, like today, we go online and we send a message in the email to our congressmen.
[02:23:12]  Maybe we stop by their local office.
[02:23:15]  Back in the 1800s, you literally sent a petition to your congressman and there was time set aside on the House floor for the reading of petitions.
[02:23:25]  And anti-slavery activists, abolitionists, they were like, let's flood Congress with these anti-slavery petitions.
[02:23:33]  That's how we'll have our voice heard.
[02:23:36]  And a lot of congressmen didn't want to read them.
[02:23:39]  But Adams was part of a small coterie of congressmen who were brave enough to read them.
[02:23:45]  Not because Adams agreed with them, but because he believed all citizens have a right to have their voices heard.
[02:23:51]  So when the gag rules passed, Adams thought, he's like, this is no longer about emancipation and slavery.
[02:23:59]  Now this is about the First Amendment.
[02:24:02]  And if you take away the right to petition your government, next will be the right to peaceably assemble, the right to freedom of religion, freedom of speech.
[02:24:12]  And he really became a First Amendment activist initially.
[02:24:17]  Over time, he grows closer to the cause.
[02:24:20]  You say, quote, it was John Quincy Adams who struck the first blow against slave power.
[02:24:27]  Was it his fight against this gag rule that did that?
[02:24:30]  Well, that, I agree with that.
[02:24:32]  And that's a quote from Theodore Weld, who was an abolitionist of the time.
[02:24:36]  And you can make the argument that he did in a few ways.
[02:24:42]  In defying the gag rule, Adams would use, I call it verbal jiu-jitsu on the House floor.
[02:24:49]  You're not supposed to mention slavery.
[02:24:51]  If they're debating something else, he would start debating what the issue of the moment was, and he would turn it into a fight against slavery.
[02:24:59]  He always subverted the gag rule.
[02:25:02]  He did it many times.
[02:25:03]  In fact, they tried to censure him twice, and he defeated their censures.
[02:25:09]  That's one blow against the slave power, which they called, the abolitionists would call, the slaveocracy.
[02:25:15]  And then in the 1839, the Amistad, which was a mutinied slave ship that was found off the coast of Long Island, Adams defended those captives before the Supreme Court and wins.
[02:25:31]  And that was a pivotal moment in the anti-slavery fight.
[02:25:36]  If you'd like to join our conversation, Bob Crawford is in the studio with us.
[02:25:40]  He'll be with us until the end of the program.
[02:25:42]  He's a historian, an author, a musician.
[02:25:45]  We're talking about John Quincy Adams.
[02:25:47]  The lines are bipartisan.
[02:25:48]  Democrats are on 202-748-8000.
[02:25:51]  Republicans on 202-748-8001.
[02:25:54]  And Independents 202-748-8002.
[02:25:57]  You can start calling in now.
[02:25:58]  Can you talk about the sources that you used for writing this book?
[02:26:01]  There is a great source that we all have access to.
[02:26:04]  It's primary sourceco-op.org, primary sourceco-op.org.
[02:26:14]  It is a group, primary source co-op.
[02:26:16]  They partner with the Massachusetts Historical Society.
[02:26:20]  And John Quincy Adams had a diary he kept from when he was a teenager to almost when he passed away at the age of 80.
[02:26:29]  It is 14,000 pages long.
[02:26:32]  And Primary Source Co-op has created a database of it.
[02:26:36]  So you can search the year, the day, a topic, a name.
[02:26:41]  And that was by far the greatest source I referenced.
[02:26:46]  Also, all the congressional records are online going back to the founding of the nation.
[02:26:53]  The University of North Texas has a great resource for them that I often used.
[02:26:59]  I also referred to Adams' letters and, of course, prior secondary sources, books written about Adams.
[02:27:06]  I want to show you something and have you comment on a quote from your book.
[02:27:11]  And this is about his anti-slavery actions.
[02:27:16]  It says this: John Quincy Adams had long struggled with the issue of slavery.
[02:27:21]  Like his parents, he did not believe in owning enslaved people.
[02:27:24]  However, Adams accepted slavery as a reality in America, a political expedience to yield to Southern sentiment for the sake of preserving harmony in the Union.
[02:27:35]  Privately, he found it repulsive.
[02:27:37]  He preferred not to think about it at all.
[02:27:41]  The day would come when it was all he would think about.
[02:27:44]  Yeah, as Secretary of State, he defended, he argued with Great Britain about reparations for enslavers, Southern slaveholders who lost their slave property during the War of 1812.
[02:27:58]  You know, there was a big sense of not upsetting the status quo because if you mess with slavery, if you talk about it, if you try to change the way things are in the present, that will lead to a civil war.
[02:28:17]  It will lead to a dissolution of the Union.
[02:28:19]  So Adams, like many Northerners, didn't even want to talk about it.
[02:28:23]  And in fact, when the abolitionist movement really began to gain steam in the 1830s and 1840s, they received a lot of the violence that was perpetrated against them came in the North from their fellow Northerners who were just terrified that this anti-slavery movement was going to tear apart the nation.
[02:28:46]  Adams made some predictions about the future of the country.
[02:28:49]  What did he predict and how accurate was he?
[02:28:52]  In 1820, when the nation is debating the Missouri Compromise, so you've got to understand, Missouri Territory is about to come into the Union in 1819.
[02:29:03]  There's a bill before the House for Missouri statehood.
[02:29:07]  There's a Northern congressman named James Talmadge.
[02:29:10]  He offers two amendments that would essentially end enslavement in Missouri when it becomes a state.
[02:29:17]  That bill passes the House and Congress adjourns.
[02:29:23]  And so Missouri is not yet a state, but it's looking like it could possibly come in as a free state, and Southerners lost their minds.
[02:29:35]  And it ignited the slavery debate, the debate over slavery in the country, like it had not been discussed since the Constitutional Convention.
[02:29:45]  So it was like ripping a, if the three-fifths compromise was a band-aid, it ripped the band-aid off of that compromise.
[02:29:53]  So Adams, he keeps this diary, and he doesn't have a vote.
[02:29:59]  He's the Secretary of State, but he's writing.
[02:30:01]  He's writing about the debate going on in the country, in state legislatures, in newspapers, and how it's beginning to rip the country apart.
[02:30:10]  He says the only way slavery is going to end will be through violence.
[02:30:14]  It will be through a civil war, because the enslavers in the South will never willingly give up their property.
[02:30:21]  He met Abraham Lincoln.
[02:30:23]  We believe he had to have.
[02:30:25]  There's not a lot of firm evidence, right?
[02:30:31]  I found, and my friend Chris DeRose, he pointed me to this.
[02:30:36]  He wrote a book about Congressman Lincoln.
[02:30:39]  So Adams is very old.
[02:30:41]  He's still in Congress when Lincoln comes in for his one term.
[02:30:45]  And they don't talk about each other very much in their writings.
[02:30:50]  But there is a party at the home of Seton, William Seton, who was the longtime mayor of D.C.
[02:30:59]  And he was the editor of the Washington Intelligence newspaper.
[02:31:03]  He was a Whig, and he has a party.
[02:31:05]  And this is a few days, like five days before Adams dies.
[02:31:09]  And it's for Whig congressmen.
[02:31:12]  And the Southern congressman who's at this party writes that Adams was sitting on a couch greeting people.
[02:31:22]  And we think Lincoln was there.
[02:31:24]  So obviously they met.
[02:31:25]  There's another writing about Adams at his desk surrounded by congressmen from Illinois, like from all, from the congressional delegation of Illinois.
[02:31:36]  So we think he met there.
[02:31:38]  It's possible that Lincoln was in the House when Adams died because Adams was fallen by a stroke.
[02:31:46]  Oh, no, no, I want to talk about his family.
[02:31:47]  We'll get to that.
[02:31:48]  The greatest death in American history, maybe.
[02:31:51]  And finally, Lincoln is part of the funeral committee for Adams, for Adams' funeral.
[02:31:58]  So there's no hard evidence, you know?
[02:32:01]  So you really talk about him as the bridge between Jefferson and Lincoln.
[02:32:07]  Absolutely.
[02:32:08]  No doubt.
[02:32:09]  No doubt.
[02:32:09]  And the revolution and the Civil War, that he's the pivotal figure in the middle.
[02:32:15]  Mimi, Washington appoints him to his first diplomatic post, and he serves with Lincoln in Congress.
[02:32:22]  Again, when we first sat down here, I said, there's the revolution we learn.
[02:32:27]  There's the Civil War we learn.
[02:32:29]  What happened in between?
[02:32:31]  You know, there's the promise of the Declaration of Independence, and then there's the rebirth of freedom.
[02:32:38]  And the man standing in the breach was John Quincy Adams.
[02:32:44]  Let's talk to callers.
[02:32:45]  Mike, Indianapolis, on the Independent line, you're on the air with Bob Crawford.
[02:32:50]  Thank you for taking my call.
[02:32:52]  I appreciate the information on John Quincy Adams.
[02:32:55]  Just a question.
[02:32:57]  What party does Mr. Crawford believe that he would be part of today, a Democrat, Republican, or would he be an independent like most people, I think, in this country?
[02:33:06]  And if he could talk about what he thinks about America's involvement in foreign wars, I'll just hang up now.
[02:33:12]  Thank you.
[02:33:13]  These are great questions.
[02:33:15]  So Adams was a member, initially a member of the Federalist Party.
[02:33:20]  He defied his party as a senator by supporting Thomas Jefferson in the Embargo Act and the Louisiana Purchase.
[02:33:27]  So he's kind of drummed out of the Federalist Party.
[02:33:29]  He was definitely drummed out of the Senate by Federalist Party elders.
[02:33:33]  And then he serves the Virginia dynasty, right?
[02:33:37]  He's a diplomat under Madison, and he's a diplomat under Monroe.
[02:33:43]  And at this point, era of good feelings, Federalist Party's kind of dissolved.
[02:33:47]  Everybody's one party, seemingly.
[02:33:51]  Adams eventually joins the Whigs, but he's always independent.
[02:33:56]  He's a very independent.
[02:33:59]  If you read his diary and when the election cycle would come up, the presidential election cycle would come up, he would trash all the candidates.
[02:34:08]  So he really was, he considered himself a representative for the Union.
[02:34:13]  And so where would he be right now?
[02:34:17]  Well, whatever the majority is, he'd be in the opposition, if not by title, but by effort.

=== Jefferson Era Opposition (02:44) ===

[02:34:24]  And he, Mike asked about America's involvement in foreign wars.
[02:34:27]  But before you answer that, I want to show you what Senator Rand Paul said.
[02:34:31]  This was on March 5th, so this is very current.
[02:34:33]  He said this: But had Congress debated war with Iran, we would have been wise to recall the words of John Quincy Adams, who, as Secretary of State, advocated a foreign policy of restraint.
[02:34:46]  Quote: Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, Adams argued, there will America's heart, her benedictions, and her prayers be.
[02:34:58]  But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.
[02:35:02]  And a few days later, Pete Hegseff used that same quote when he was talking about American policy in South America, that conference of the Americas.
[02:35:16]  And he used it in a different context.
[02:35:20]  So where does Adams stand on foreign wars?
[02:35:24]  He was, see, the Monroe Doctrine is like, it's like, we're not going to, okay, all these South American colonies were in revolt against Spain and their imperialist overlords.
[02:35:39]  And Adams was saying, Holy Alliance, Prussia, Austria, France, Prussia, you stay out of our hemisphere.
[02:35:49]  You don't belong here anymore.
[02:35:52]  Britain, you too.
[02:35:54]  We support these freedom movements in South America, but we're not going to get involved unless at some point we feel like we need to get involved.
[02:36:04]  So it's really vague.
[02:36:05]  Like, and I bet some of your callers know this better than I, but I've begun to ask myself the question, because I didn't, this wasn't the focus of my book, but in before World War II, the isolationist movement in this country, I wonder if they used that quote.
[02:36:25]  Let's talk to David, Republican, Poughkeepsie, New York.
[02:36:29]  David, good morning.
[02:36:30]  Well, good morning.
[02:36:33]  Building on what was just discussed, I was wondering if Bob covered anything about John Clinton Adams' staunch opposition to paying tribute to the Barbary pirates back then and advocating instead for military action to secure the American shipping rights.
[02:36:56]  I wonder, did he ever cover that in his book?
[02:36:59]  I did not cover that in the book, but you can see where he's kind of vague on the use of military force, right?

=== Whigs and Democrats Clash (13:26) ===

[02:37:09]  So this would have been during Jefferson's presidency.
[02:37:11]  He would have been Secretary of State at the time?
[02:37:13]  Oh, no, during Jefferson's presidency, he was in the Senate.
[02:37:16]  He was in the Senate.
[02:37:16]  He was a senator.
[02:37:17]  And he did, again, like I said, he defied his Federalist Party to support Jefferson at least a few times.
[02:37:27]  Ari, tell us about John Quincy Adams' death.
[02:37:30]  It's epic.
[02:37:32]  He is 80 years old.
[02:37:34]  He is still showing up to Congress every day.
[02:37:38]  He suffered a stroke in, I think, 1846.
[02:37:41]  He recovered.
[02:37:42]  He returns to the House, standing ovation.
[02:37:46]  And he's serving.
[02:37:47]  And this is at the end of the Mexican War.
[02:37:51]  And he did not, like Congressman Lincoln, Adams never supported the Mexican War.
[02:37:58]  And there's a proclamation or some procedural vote accommodating generals and American generals in the Mexican War.
[02:38:10]  And Adams, while they're debating it, he yells out, no.
[02:38:14]  And then at one point, he tries to stand up to speak.
[02:38:19]  And as is reported in the newspapers of the time, he's like trying to grab his desk.
[02:38:24]  It's hard for me to not like here.
[02:38:27]  But he's trying to stand up and he falls over and he's caught.
[02:38:31]  And of course, there's a gasp in the room.
[02:38:34]  Mr. Adams is dying.
[02:38:36]  And they bring over a couch.
[02:38:39]  They lay him on a couch.
[02:38:42]  A couch that's still at the Capitol today.
[02:38:45]  Really?
[02:38:45]  We have that couch?
[02:38:46]  We have that couch.
[02:38:47]  Do they let people sit on it?
[02:38:49]  I sat on it.
[02:38:50]  Yes, and they do.
[02:38:51]  And in fact, people sit on that couch every day because it is in the women's powder room, which at the time of Adams' death was the Speaker's Chamber.
[02:39:03]  It's right off of the rotunda floor.
[02:39:07]  And they carried him into that room.
[02:39:10]  Henry Clay comes over from the Senate, kneels next to him, holds his hand, is weeping.
[02:39:16]  They go get his wife.
[02:39:17]  His wife comes.
[02:39:19]  He's almost, by the time his wife got there, he had lost consciousness.
[02:39:24]  But before he loses consciousness, he says, this is the end of earth.
[02:39:28]  I am composed.
[02:39:30]  And then he loses consciousness.
[02:39:32]  And he dies a day and a half later on that couch in the Capitol.
[02:39:39]  Having never been moved from there.
[02:39:41]  He died in the Capitol.
[02:39:42]  First, they put him on the couch, and this is February.
[02:39:45]  And they're like, he needs air.
[02:39:46]  So they take him outside.
[02:39:48]  Then they're like, no, it's too cold.
[02:39:49]  They take him back inside.
[02:39:51]  And then they take him to the Speaker's Chamber.
[02:39:54]  Steve in Massachusetts Independent Line, you're on with Bob Crawford.
[02:39:58]  Oh, hi.
[02:39:59]  Thanks.
[02:40:00]  I love this topic.
[02:40:02]  You just gave away.
[02:40:03]  I wanted to bring up of how he met his demise on the floor of the House.
[02:40:08]  I don't know if you brought up before, I think you said quick, but he was known as Old Man Eloquent.
[02:40:13]  And he was a staunch, he hated slavery with a passion.
[02:40:19]  And I believe it was the government that prevented him from trying to abolish slavery.
[02:40:25]  He was also, I don't know if you brought this up, he had the highest IQ of all presidents.
[02:40:30]  If you want to talk about nepotism, he had it.
[02:40:36]  His family had so much to do with the founding of the country.
[02:40:40]  Going back to the father of the Revolution, Sam Adams, his father was a landowner, and England took all the land.
[02:40:48]  It's just a great history, and this is what we should be teaching our children.
[02:40:52]  Amen.
[02:40:52]  I just wanted to say, hey, you know, Sam, this is just a great topic.
[02:40:56]  One of the greatest presidents ever, he never got it done.
[02:40:59]  You know, that's where he sits in with Kennedy and other presidents.
[02:41:02]  And as far as Rand Paul comparisons go, I think this man would be on Trump's side.
[02:41:08]  What Trump is trying to do is much bigger than anything.
[02:41:12]  And I believe that when God chose Trump for all his fallacies or his bad things, this was one of them.
[02:41:22]  He had the guts to do this.
[02:41:23]  And other presidents, it was laid right before him.
[02:41:27]  I'm not going to mention their names, but they chose not to, whether it would be out of fear or whatever.
[02:41:36]  And thank God for Pete Eggsets because we know he's not a deep stater.
[02:41:41]  All right, Steve.
[02:41:42]  Go ahead, Bob.
[02:41:43]  Some good comments in there.
[02:41:45]  Some I probably don't agree with, but we don't know where Adams would sit.
[02:41:49]  You know, we don't know where we do know this, you know, he lost re-election to a populist politician that election.
[02:42:02]  So, well, you need to talk about 1824 to talk about 1828 because 1824 sets up 1828.
[02:42:10]  You have four men standing for the presidency.
[02:42:13]  You have the Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams.
[02:42:17]  His resume is impeccable.
[02:42:20]  And the Secretary of State position was the stepping stone to the presidency at the time.
[02:42:25]  You have William H. Crawford, the Treasury Secretary.
[02:42:28]  He and Adams are enemies for.
[02:42:30]  Any relation to you?
[02:42:32]  Not that I have been able to find.
[02:42:33]  No, he was from Georgia.
[02:42:35]  He was the, you know, it stinks.
[02:42:39]  A lot of his letters were burned, were lost in a fire.
[02:42:43]  But he was the heel of, like, how I understand it, through Adams' eyes, at least, he was the heel of the cabinet.
[02:42:50]  He used his, the Treasury Secretary had a lot of spoils to spread around, a lot of patronage, and he used it to his political advantage.
[02:43:01]  And then also running was the Speaker of the House, Henry Clay, and of course, Andrew Jackson, the war hero, the hero of the Battle of New Orleans, a common man for the common man, but a wealthy man, an enslaver, owned over 100 slaves.
[02:43:19]  And so these four men are standing for the presidency.
[02:43:22]  And when the election comes and the votes are counted, Jackson has won a plurality, but not a majority.
[02:43:31]  He has come out of nowhere.
[02:43:33]  Adams is the one you think is going to win.
[02:43:36]  Reminds me of 2016, the resume of Hillary Clinton versus the populist fervor and popular appeal of Donald Trump.
[02:43:46]  And so Jackson, but he doesn't win a majority.
[02:43:49]  So what happens?
[02:43:50]  Well, based on the 12th Amendment, the vote goes to the House.
[02:43:54]  Every state delegation gets one vote.
[02:43:58]  Henry Clay, so the top three candidates are involved in that.
[02:44:02]  So it's Crawford, it's Jackson, and it's Adams.
[02:44:06]  Henry Clay cannot be president, but he can be Kingmaker.
[02:44:10]  And there are in Adams' diary, he talks about being visited by friends of Clay, and they talk about men and things and events.
[02:44:22]  Clay and Adams themselves meet personally.
[02:44:26]  Henry Clay hated Andrew Jackson.
[02:44:29]  Hated him.
[02:44:31]  Henry Clay wanted to be the first president from the West, not Andrew Jackson.
[02:44:37]  Andrew Jackson had a really controversial past, and the two men could not be more opposite.
[02:44:44]  So when the vote comes February 9th, 1825 in the House, Adams wins.
[02:44:50]  He wins 13 votes straight out, gives him the majority.
[02:44:54]  He is the president.
[02:44:56]  Not by the acclamation of the American people, but by the vote of a fail-safe vote in the Congress.
[02:45:05]  And immediately, so Kentucky during the election.
[02:45:09]  So the supporters of Andrew Jackson feel like it was stolen.
[02:45:13]  They cry, corrupt bargain, corrupt bargain.
[02:45:16]  Because why is it a corrupt bargain?
[02:45:18]  About a week or so after being president-elect, Adams names Henry Clay to be his Secretary of State, which, like I've said several times so far today, is a stepping stone to the presidency.
[02:45:33]  Gil, Jamestown, North Carolina, Democrat, you're on the air.
[02:45:37]  Yes, good morning, Mr. Crawford and Mimi.
[02:45:41]  Morning to you both.
[02:45:44]  I'm presently reading David McCullough's biography about John Adams, John Q. Adams' father.
[02:45:52]  It's a fascinating and wonderfully written book.
[02:45:56]  I'm looking forward to your book.
[02:45:57]  But what I wanted to comment was on the parties, Democratic-Republican parties.
[02:46:03]  Of course, our Constitution back when in the time of George Washington, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton, there were no parties that were favored until you just mentioned the Jacksonian Democrats.
[02:46:18]  And from the Jacksonian Democrats, they then, you know, we move into the Civil War and Reconstruction.
[02:46:28]  The comment that I want to make, I'm trying not to get ahead of myself.
[02:46:33]  With John Q. Adams, I really admire him because after he became president and then he lost the next election, he went back to Congress.
[02:46:45]  He actually defended the mutineers of the Amistad mutiny off of Long Island, which I thought was absolutely phenomenal, that a former president would go back to Congress and then defend mutineers who were against slavery.
[02:47:03]  So my point is, the Jacksonian Democrats who were for slavery, and they then evolved into the present-day Dixiecrats, who I call Dinos, Democrats in name only, and these Democrats in name only are the present-day faction of Republicans that are white supremacists and racist.
[02:47:31]  And so this I posed to Mimi, anytime a caller calls in and says that the Democrat Party were against slavery or against civil rights, please push back on the shibboleth that the Dixiecrats and the like are not the Democratic Party of FDR, of Harry Truman, of Bill Clinton, of Jimmy Carter,
[02:48:00]  of John F. Kennedy, of Barack Obama.
[02:48:04]  Right.
[02:48:05]  New Deal Democrats.
[02:48:07]  Please push back on any caller that comes in and says, oh, Democrats were for slavery.
[02:48:14]  Democrats were against the civil rights movement.
[02:48:18]  All right, got it, Gil.
[02:48:20]  Let's get Bob to respond.
[02:48:21]  Well, you know, we have similar names for really the Democratic Party.
[02:48:25]  The Whig Party was the party in the time of Adams.
[02:48:30]  It was the Whigs and the Democrats.
[02:48:31]  And of course, yes, the Democrats.
[02:48:33]  Martin Van Buren, who's a character in this book, he's the architect of that first Democratic Party, which was the Jacksonian Party.
[02:48:44]  They considered it the heir to the Jeffersons party.
[02:48:49]  And Van Buren's notable because he creates that top-down party structure, right?
[02:48:56]  There's a state party, and all these local parties feed into the state party.
[02:49:01]  The state party feeds into the national party.
[02:49:05]  They embrace conventions and he really, that two-party system, though the names have changed, though the ideals and the ideologies have changed, sometimes these parties, they just change different clothes.
[02:49:24]  They trade each other's clothes.
[02:49:25]  But the Dixiecrat Party was an insurgency.
[02:49:29]  This is not my area of expertise here.
[02:49:32]  I didn't write a book about the Dixiecrats.
[02:49:34]  It'd be a worthy book.
[02:49:35]  I didn't write it.
[02:49:36]  But the Dixiecrat Party was an insurgency within the Democratic Party, and they became ultimately Republicans today.
[02:49:43]  We have a question for you on X from Jersey Girl who says, how does Mr. Crawford's book differ or add to Militant Spirit by James Traub?
[02:49:53]  Oh, I love that book.
[02:49:55]  It is the child of that book.
[02:49:58]  Yeah.
[02:49:59]  So this book, my book, so my book is not cradle to grave like his is.
[02:50:04]  Mine is from 1820 to 1848.
[02:50:07]  And it's really about Adams and how he changes.
[02:50:12]  He makes an internal, an internal and external turn in his life about how he views slavery and understands slavery.
[02:50:22]  But I have tremendous respect for James Troud.
[02:50:25]  His book is amazing.
[02:50:26]  And I did a podcast series about John Quincy Adams that was the predecessor to the book.
[02:50:32]  And he is on that series.

=== Adams Views on Slavery (12:36) ===

[02:50:35]  And I'm so honored to have him on there.
[02:50:37]  All right, let's talk to Charles.
[02:50:38]  Preston, Connecticut, Independent Line.
[02:50:40]  Go ahead, Charles.
[02:50:42]  Yeah, hi.
[02:50:43]  I'm going to be 83 years old in April.
[02:50:46]  And I heard a song on the radio called No Hard Feelings.
[02:50:50]  And I had to get that song, so I got it through a music store in Mystic, Connecticut.
[02:50:55]  And when I listen to that song, it just cracks me up, chokes me up.
[02:51:00]  I mean, it's so, so emotional for me.
[02:51:03]  And I wonder if any other people feel the same way.
[02:51:06]  Thanks a lot.
[02:51:07]  Bye.
[02:51:08]  Thank you for your call.
[02:51:09]  And I do.
[02:51:10]  I do.
[02:51:11]  I can't.
[02:51:12]  When we first recorded that song, I told my wife I won't be able to play this without crying.
[02:51:18]  What's it about?
[02:51:19]  It's about dying.
[02:51:21]  No hard feelings.
[02:51:22]  Yeah.
[02:51:22]  I'll cry right now.
[02:51:24]  It's a beautiful song.
[02:51:25]  And yeah, thank you.
[02:51:27]  That beautiful call.
[02:51:28]  Thank you.
[02:51:29]  You talked about how his wife, Louisa, was with him at the Capitol when he was dying.
[02:51:35]  What kind of a father was he?
[02:51:37]  What kind of a husband was he?
[02:51:39]  Not so great.
[02:51:41]  Not so great.
[02:51:43]  So Louisa wasn't with him.
[02:51:45]  It's so, this is so tragic.
[02:51:47]  There's a great, Louisa Catherine Adams was an incredible person.
[02:51:53]  And a writer, a great writer named Louisa Thomas wrote a biography about her that your viewers and listeners should check out.
[02:52:04]  Louisa Thomas is the author.
[02:52:06]  It's her book about Louisa Catherine Adams.
[02:52:09]  So when Adams dies, they go get her, right, when he's collapsed.
[02:52:15]  And they allow her to sit with him for like five hours, something like that.
[02:52:21]  And when his breathing quickens, when they think he's close to death, they usher her out.
[02:52:26]  Why?
[02:52:28]  Because she's a woman.
[02:52:29]  You know, I don't know.
[02:52:32]  They ushered her out of the room.
[02:52:33]  She wanted to be the one to close his eyes.
[02:52:35]  It's very tragic and very sad.
[02:52:38]  That being said, they had a tough marriage.
[02:52:40]  They had a long marriage.
[02:52:41]  They suffered a lot.
[02:52:43]  They lost three children, many miscarriages.
[02:52:47]  They endured a lot of grief together.
[02:52:49]  And I think there was real love there.
[02:52:51]  There was a lot of love there.
[02:52:53]  But Adams, to marry into that family, it would be awful.
[02:53:00]  Because John and Abigail, you know, it's just a lot of pressure to be their child.
[02:53:07]  And to be their daughter-in-law.
[02:53:08]  And especially to be their daughter.
[02:53:10]  I don't think Abigail liked Louisa Catherine.
[02:53:12]  She was British.
[02:53:14]  She was our first foreign-born first lady.
[02:53:19]  And when John Quincy, he would go, so her father was from Maryland and her mother was English and they lived in London.
[02:53:28]  And a lot of the American diplomats would go visit.
[02:53:32]  They had quite a scene at their house in London.
[02:53:36]  Mr. Johnson had like four or five daughters.
[02:53:39]  They were all very beautiful.
[02:53:40]  They all played music.
[02:53:41]  And so Adams would hang out there and he just kind of liked the scene.
[02:53:45]  He just kind of liked being there.
[02:53:46]  I think he maybe at first had a crush on one of her sisters and they get married.
[02:53:50]  But yeah, John and Abigail were not, they didn't think that a future president should have a foreign-born wife.
[02:53:57]  But love does what love does and they got married.
[02:54:01]  But it was a very difficult, and of course he was hard on his sons like his father was hard on him.
[02:54:09]  Also, we believe alcoholism ran through Abigail's family line and two of Louisa's and John Quincy's sons die.
[02:54:19]  One commits suicide.
[02:54:21]  Two months after he loses reelection, George Washington Adams jumps off the back of a steamship coming from Quincy to D.C. to help his parents move back north.
[02:54:33]  And then their other son, John Adams II, essentially drinks himself to death and dies in 1834.
[02:54:40]  And Charles Francis, just as John Quincy is his parents' surviving son, Charles Francis Adams, the youngest son of John Quincy and Louisa, becomes the surviving son, and he is the son that will become minister to Great Britain in the Lincoln administration and goes on to have a great career.
[02:55:03]  But in Charles Francis' diary, he's thinking about his brothers and he's wondering if alcohol, if alcoholism doesn't exist as a disease, but he wonders if this alcohol that his brothers have been so addicted to, he wonders, is this actually a disease?
[02:55:24]  It's really remarkable.
[02:55:26]  But yeah, they have a tough personal life.
[02:55:28]  You called John Quincy Adams our most extraordinary ex-president.
[02:55:32]  You talked about how extraordinary it was that a president after leaving office would run for office and join the House of Representatives.
[02:55:41]  Why did he do that?
[02:55:42]  I mean, why not just retire and write and be an elder statesman?
[02:55:48]  Well, I think he was raised to be a public servant.
[02:55:52]  He was raised to preserve the nation that his parents sacrificed so much to found.
[02:55:59]  There's also some ego involved.
[02:56:01]  He was also, he was, he had been just, this is right after he loses re-election, you know, well, within about a year.
[02:56:12]  And he's a grieving father.
[02:56:15]  And he's newly retired, which he probably didn't love that.
[02:56:21]  And he has an ego.
[02:56:23]  He probably had some scores to settle with the people who he thought were out to get him and lost him re-election.
[02:56:29]  So all of the above.
[02:56:32]  But he says his son, Charles Francis, and his wife are against him, like doing this.
[02:56:39]  They're like, this is like a demotion.
[02:56:41]  Why would you be in the House after being president?
[02:56:44]  But Adams said, if the constituents ask me to serve, I'll serve on a town council, whatever I'm asked to do.
[02:56:52]  That's what every American citizen should do for their country.
[02:56:56]  I want to read another portion of your book just for the audience.
[02:56:59]  It says this, with one hand reaching back to the founding and the other reaching forward toward the Civil War, John Quincy Adams is a bridge and perhaps the best representation of America's tortured adolescents.
[02:57:12]  John Quincy Adams may not have been an extraordinary president like Washington and Lincoln, but he is our most extraordinary ex-president, a maverick, a public servant, an American hero.
[02:57:25]  Yes, I agree.
[02:57:29]  Let's talk to Abby in Inglewood, California, Democrat.
[02:57:32]  Good morning.
[02:57:35]  Yeah, this is Abby.
[02:57:36]  I say, I was calling it.
[02:57:38]  Didn't George Washington and Thomas Jefferson own slaves?
[02:57:43]  Yes, they did.
[02:57:44]  Absolutely, they did.
[02:57:45]  Yeah, yeah.
[02:57:46]  And John Quincy Adams as well?
[02:57:48]  He did not.
[02:57:49]  He did not, but his wife's family.
[02:57:52]  So Adams abhorred slavery and he would not allow, but he would not own them.
[02:57:59]  However, Louisa, like I said, her father was a Marylander.
[02:58:04]  She was technically a Southerner.
[02:58:06]  And her sisters.
[02:58:08]  Was it Thomas?
[02:58:10]  Sorry, go ahead, Abby.
[02:58:12]  Did you have a further question?
[02:58:15]  I'm sorry, I wasn't Thomas Jefferson that had slaves, too.
[02:58:20]  Yes, Thomas Jefferson owns many slaves.
[02:58:23]  Absolutely.
[02:58:26]  So Adams was around enslaved people.
[02:58:29]  In D.C., if you moved in those high society circles in which the Adamses did, you were going to be in contact with enslaved individuals.
[02:58:39]  And in fact, you know, Louisa Catherine's sisters and their husbands owned slaves.
[02:58:47]  And when Adams went to the White House, he was taking care of some of his nieces and nephews, and they were living with him.
[02:58:57]  And their enslaved people also lived in the Adams White House.
[02:59:01]  Doug, you are Belinda, California, Republican.
[02:59:04]  Good morning, Doug.
[02:59:06]  Good morning.
[02:59:07]  I was just wondering if Bob has thought about having a concert on C-SPAN to promote the book.
[02:59:15]  And I noticed he's not coming to Los Angeles on the book tour, but if you're ever in the area, that'd be great.
[02:59:22]  Hey, is it Doug?
[02:59:23]  Doug.
[02:59:24]  Okay, Doug.
[02:59:27]  Next Saturday, this Saturday, we're playing in Ontario, California, which is 45 minutes east of L.A.
[02:59:36]  And we are playing at a baseball park there with Dwight Yoakum and the iguanas.
[02:59:43]  So if I know L.A. traffic probably stinks, but come on out, 45 minutes east to Ontario, and we'd love to see you.
[02:59:51]  And yes, hopefully we'll get a book tour.
[02:59:53]  I'm going to be out in San Francisco and Seattle this week.
[02:59:56]  Hopefully at some point I'll get to do something in LA.
[02:59:58]  Thank you.
[02:59:59]  Thank you.
[03:00:01]  This is a text that we got from David.
[03:00:06]  Oh, so he said I was cut off before I could finish my question about the Barbary Pirates.
[03:00:10]  Could Bob discuss about how Adams changed his views about military force to secure the shipping lanes through the Strait of Gibraltar?
[03:00:20]  That is a great question.
[03:00:22]  And that is not the focus of my book.
[03:00:25]  And I don't want to misspeak.
[03:00:28]  So I thank you for your question.
[03:00:31]  And this also now from Nelson in Florida.
[03:00:35]  Can Mr. Crawford explain why Andrew Jackson beat John Quincy Adams for president?
[03:00:40]  In 1828, talk about a dirty election.
[03:00:45]  Our elections are so, so brutal these days.
[03:00:50]  Well, this may have been the ugliest election this nation has ever seen.
[03:00:55]  I know it's hard for us today to believe that.
[03:00:58]  Adams won straight out.
[03:01:00]  You know, no, sorry, Jackson won.
[03:01:03]  There was no debate about who won the 1828 election.
[03:01:06]  Did he win the popular vote?
[03:01:08]  Oh, yes.
[03:01:08]  Yes, absolutely.
[03:01:12]  Here's the problem with Adams as president.
[03:01:14]  He has a failed one-term presidency.
[03:01:16]  He was not, you know, he was a minority president from the time he took the oath of office.
[03:01:22]  But what really killed him is his agenda for his presidency was infrastructure.
[03:01:32]  He wanted federally funded roads, bridges, canals.
[03:01:37]  He wanted to tie this nation together.
[03:01:40]  He wanted the government to invest in a naval academy.
[03:01:44]  He wanted the government to invest in a national university, a national university that was first proposed by George Washington.
[03:01:51]  And so in his first annual message to Congress, what we would today consider the State of the Union address, he says to Congress, when he's asking, he's laying out his agenda, he says, we cannot be palsied by the will of our constituents.
[03:02:08]  Basically saying, your constituents don't want to spend taxpayer dollars on these things, on infrastructure, but they don't know what's good for them.
[03:02:19]  We need to do this regardless of what they think.
[03:02:22]  And it was essentially, he essentially called half the nation a basket of deplorables.
[03:02:28]  And the Jackson men, and Jackson himself immediately jumped on that comment.
[03:02:32]  Palsied by the will of your constituents became the basket of deplorables of 1828.
[03:02:40]  Let's talk to Leanne, Arlington, Texas.
[03:02:42]  Democrat, good morning.
[03:02:44]  Good morning.
[03:02:46]  I just wanted to know: do you have from Quincy Adams?
[03:02:57]  Do you know what happened to his DNA?
[03:03:01]  Who are his kids who are living to this day?
[03:03:06]  Oh, that is a great question.
[03:03:08]  You know, I've just done some online, just curious.

=== Mobilizing Lebanese Military (13:19) ===

[03:03:12]  I do know that the Adams family, the Adams family, they do get together at Peacefield, at his home in Quincy, Massachusetts, that you can visit.
[03:03:23]  I think once a year they all gather.
[03:03:26]  None of them, I believe, are in public office today, but he did have, you know, Charles Francis, his son went on to have a great career.
[03:03:35]  And of course, Charles Francis Jr. fought in the Civil War.
[03:03:39]  And we know Henry Adams as being the great historian and writer that he was.
[03:03:44]  You mentioned you're continuing to go on tour with your band.
[03:03:48]  I just wonder if your fellow bandmates and the crew are sick and tired of hearing about John Quincy Adams.
[03:03:54]  If they are, which I'm sure they are, they're too nice to say anything about it.
[03:03:58]  All right.
[03:03:59]  Well, that's Bob Crawford.
[03:04:00]  He's a musician with the Abbott Brothers.
[03:04:02]  He's a historian, author of the book called America's Founding Son, John Quincy Adams from President to Political Maverick.
[03:04:09]  Thanks so much for coming in.
[03:04:10]  Mimi, thank you for having me.
[03:04:12]  It's been a blast.
[03:04:13]  And that's it for us today.
[03:04:15]  We're going to go ahead and take you to the Israeli Ambassador Danny Dannon.
[03:04:21]  He will be addressing correspondence at the UN Security Council in New York.
[03:04:26]  We'll bring you live coverage of that as soon as he comes out.
[03:04:30]  In the meantime, have a great day.
[03:04:32]  We'll see you again tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. Eastern.
[03:05:02]  Overnight, it will expand the forward defense.
[03:05:09]  Good morning.
[03:05:11]  Overnight, it will expand the forward defense area to Target Lebanon.
[03:05:18]  This step was taken to review immediate terrorism to our border and create an additional layer of equity for the residence of modern Europe.
[03:05:31]  It will be not choose this place in Valladi.
[03:05:43]  being so well as not supposed to be present Friday last week.
[03:14:50]  and make them effective when you degrade the capabilities of your enemy.
[03:14:54]  And I think with Hezbollah, unfortunately, they still have capabilities.
[03:14:59]  And what we are doing now, we are degrading their capabilities.
[03:15:02]  And I believe the next step will be talks, but first, we have to degrade the capabilities of Hezbollah.
[03:15:10]  Thank you very much.
[03:15:14]  Matsumoto with Kyodo News.
[03:15:15]  Thank you, Ambassador.
[03:15:17]  In Lebanon, 800,000 people have been displaced inside their country.
[03:15:22]  And the Secretary General appeals for the ardent humanitarian assistance.
[03:15:26]  So, does Israel have any plan to ease this crisis?
[03:15:30]  Yes, you know, we will ease this crisis once Hezbollah will not be where they shouldn't be.
[03:15:34]  You know, we actually ask the population to evacuate the areas south of the Litani because we are operating there and we don't want to see civilian casualties.
[03:15:43]  So, as you mentioned, many people move to the north, and we welcome the NGOs that are supporting them.
[03:15:50]  But the main problem is that Hezbollah is still running the show, and the Lebanese government must take action.
[03:15:56]  They say the right things, but they don't take the right action.
[03:16:00]  So, they have to mobilize the Lebanese military to the south, make sure Hezbollah is not there.
[03:16:06]  That will allow our communities to go back to live safely, and for the southern Lebanese to go back to the south to live safely as well.
[03:16:14]  Thank you very much.

=== C-SPAN Unfiltered Facts (02:27) ===

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