CSPAN - Washington Journal 03/21/2026
Aired: 2026-03-21
Duration: 03:00:59


=== Trump Considers Ending Middle East War (01:43) ===

[00:00:00]  America's White House bureau chief and a plaintiff in a lawsuit to restore Voice of America on a federal judge ordering the Trump administration to restore the government-run agency's operations after it had been shuttered last year.
[00:00:12]  And the Global Director of Research at Moore in Common, Stephen Hawkins, discusses President Trump's MAGA coalition and reaction to the war in Iran.
[00:00:21]  C-SPAN's Washington Journal is next.
[00:00:24]  Join the conversation.
[00:00:35]  Good morning.
[00:00:36]  It's Saturday, March 21st.
[00:00:38]  As we usually do on Saturdays, we're asking for your top news story of the week.
[00:00:43]  Here are some of the stories that dominated the headlines.
[00:00:45]  The conflict in Iran enters its fourth week today.
[00:00:48]  President Trump has ruled out a ceasefire, and the Pentagon is seeking an additional $200 billion in emergency funding.
[00:00:56]  Meanwhile, the U.S. is deploying 2,500 more Marines to the region as the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz sends gas prices up 20%, over 20% this week.
[00:01:07]  In the Senate, debate continues on the Save America Act.
[00:01:10]  That's a legislation that would require in-person documentary proof of citizenship to register for federal elections.
[00:01:18]  And the Senate Homeland Security Committee narrowly advanced Senator Mark Wayne Mullen to lead DHS following a combative hearing with Chairman Rand Paul.
[00:01:28]  Call us and let us know which of these or what other story this week is most important to you.
[00:01:33]  Democrats, 202748-8000.
[00:01:36]  Republicans, 202748, 8001.
[00:01:39]  And Independents, 202748, 8002.

=== Democrats Call $200 Billion Unacceptable (13:28) ===

[00:01:43]  You can send a text to 2027488003.
[00:01:48]  Include your first name in your city-state.
[00:01:50]  And we're on social media, facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and X at C-SPANWJ.
[00:01:58]  Welcome to today's Washington Journal.
[00:02:00]  A quick news update for you before we get started.
[00:02:03]  From the AP headline, Iran says its NATAN's nuclear facility is hit in an airstrike as Trump considers winding down military operations.
[00:02:14]  It says that the U.S. President Donald Trump said on social media the U.S. is considering winding down its Middle East military operation.
[00:02:23]  But Trump's statement seemed at odds with his administration's recent moves to send more troops and warships to the region and request another $200 billion from Congress to fund the war.
[00:02:34]  On one of the holiest days on the Islamic calendar, Iran fired on Israel and energy sites in neighboring Gulf states.
[00:02:42]  Gulf Arab states insisting that it can still build missiles and issuing a new threat to deny safety to its enemies, quote, in parks, recreational areas, and tourist destinations worldwide.
[00:02:56]  Israel, meanwhile, pounded Tehran with airstrikes as Iranians marked Nauru's the Persian New Year.
[00:03:03]  Well, here is President Trump yesterday speaking about the war against Iran and NATO not helping to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
[00:03:12]  The war was militarily won in Iran.
[00:03:15]  What do you mean by that?
[00:03:16]  He said the war was militarily won in Iran.
[00:03:18]  What did you mean by that?
[00:03:19]  Oh, I think we've won.
[00:03:20]  We've knocked out their Navy, their Air Force.
[00:03:22]  We've knocked out their anti-aircraft.
[00:03:24]  We've knocked out everything.
[00:03:25]  We're roaming free.
[00:03:27]  From a military standpoint, all they're doing is flogging up the strait.
[00:03:31]  But from a military standpoint, they're finished.
[00:03:34]  So how much longer could the American people won't be?
[00:03:38]  You said Iran opening the straight up route with a simple military maneuver.
[00:03:43]  Very simple.
[00:03:44]  Yeah, but what does he mean, Mike?
[00:03:46]  It's a simple military maneuver.
[00:03:48]  It's relatively safe, but you need a lot of help in the sense of you need ships, you need volume.
[00:03:57]  And NATO could help us, but they so far haven't had the courage to do so.
[00:04:01]  And others could help us, but we don't use it.
[00:04:04]  You know, at a certain point, it'll open itself at a certain point.
[00:04:09]  But we've defeated the enemy, and they are an enemy.
[00:04:12]  They're a sick group of people.
[00:04:15]  The leadership is gone.
[00:04:16]  The Navy is gone.
[00:04:17]  The Air Force is gone.
[00:04:19]  The anti-aircraft equipment that they have, the radar they have is all gone.
[00:04:24]  Everything's gone.
[00:04:26]  The strait itself, the actual straight, how are you?
[00:04:30]  The strait itself is, we're doing a good job.
[00:04:33]  But it would be nice if the countries, including China, if the countries that use it, China uses it 90% of their energy.
[00:04:42]  Japan is 95% of the energy.
[00:04:45]  It would be nice if those countries would get involved.
[00:04:49]  And regarding oil, this is CBS news that says the Trump administration temporarily lifts sanctions on Iranian oil at sea amid soaring prices.
[00:04:59]  It says the U.S. Treasury has authorized the purchase of Iranian oil that's already at sea, exempting buyers from the tight sanctions that have restricted the country's oil industry for years.
[00:05:10]  A move aimed at stemming soaring prices amid the U.S.'s war with Iran.
[00:05:15]  It says that the sanctions license allows oil from Iran to be purchased if it was loaded onto a ship by 12.01 a.m. Eastern on Friday.
[00:05:25]  The authorization lasts until April 19th, and they do not cover people located in North Korea, Cuba, or the parts of Ukraine occupied by Russia.
[00:05:36]  And this is an ex-posting by Barack Ravid.
[00:05:40]  He's a reporter with Axios, who says, U.S., to allow Iran to get about $14 billion in oil revenue.
[00:05:48]  This is a huge financial concession to Iran by the U.S.
[00:05:52]  It is the first time the U.S. is buying Iranian oil since 1996.
[00:05:56]  It's all happening in the midst of a war against Iran.
[00:06:00]  And we are getting your top news story of the week.
[00:06:04]  We'll start with Kevin in Windsor, Connecticut, Independent Line.
[00:06:07]  Hi, Kevin.
[00:06:09]  Yes, good morning.
[00:06:11]  And thank you for taking my call.
[00:06:12]  Yeah, this war is like the big lie with the elections.
[00:06:16]  Okay, if there was any intimate threat, NATO would have known about the same threat too.
[00:06:22]  But that's why Israel and Trump didn't go to NATO because they know NATO knew there wasn't no threat.
[00:06:28]  Now, Trump and the Republican Party is putting our sons and daughters in harm's way for another big lie.
[00:06:37]  That's what this is all about.
[00:06:39]  Israel was looking for a president for years to help bomb Iran.
[00:06:44]  And finally, Israel found the right chump, Trump, to do this mess.
[00:06:49]  And that's why NATO ain't getting involved because NATO, Israel, and America broke the Middle East, and nobody wants to get involved with this mess they got now.
[00:06:58]  And that's pretty much.
[00:06:59]  So, Kevin, the argument is that we have been, there's been a threat from Iran for the last 47 years from once the Islamic Republic was established in Iran.
[00:07:10]  What do you say to that?
[00:07:11]  That the threat has always been there?
[00:07:14]  Well, I mean, I mean, there's ways to go about it.
[00:07:17]  Getting our allies involved with it.
[00:07:19]  But I mean, look, these Gulf states and Israel, you know, we're paying them billions of dollars to defend themselves.
[00:07:26]  And now they want our sons and daughters to come over there.
[00:07:29]  These countries have to step up and start defending themselves like Trump told NATO to do.
[00:07:34]  Okay, we can't, every time Iran sold Iraq to Israel, we can't go over there and help them.
[00:07:40]  This is costing us too much money.
[00:07:41]  We've got enough problems in this country.
[00:07:44]  All right, let's see what Wendell in Delaware thinks on the line for Democrats.
[00:07:47]  Go ahead.
[00:07:50]  Wendell, are you there?
[00:07:52]  Yes.
[00:07:52]  Good morning.
[00:07:54]  Yeah, well, I wanted to talk about what y'all talking about this morning.
[00:07:58]  Well, it's your top news story of the week.
[00:08:00]  So, whatever happened this week that you think is most important?
[00:08:04]  I want to talk about the voting stuff.
[00:08:06]  Yeah.
[00:08:07]  But I've been talking about Trump.
[00:08:09]  We've been talking about Democrats want to cheat the way they want to vote.
[00:08:14]  That man, he's the one that nobody else never did no stuff like this until he came on there, come in now to be president.
[00:08:25]  And he can't win but cheating.
[00:08:26]  That's the only way they can win.
[00:08:29]  And no goodwill, and people ain't thinking about putting men and boys together trying to vote and stuff like that way.
[00:08:39]  And I don't know what's wrong with that, man.
[00:08:40]  That man is crazy.
[00:08:41]  I don't know what's wrong with them Republican people.
[00:08:44]  That man don't care about no poor people.
[00:08:47]  And then fools voted, all them fools voted off for him for nothing.
[00:08:52]  And he ain't trying to do nothing for him.
[00:08:54]  He spending all the money on wars and stuff.
[00:08:56]  And he never tried to get no prices down or food or nothing.
[00:09:00]  And he's been over a year and something.
[00:09:02]  And them people keep going for him and said he's doing great and all that stuff.
[00:09:07]  He ain't doing nothing.
[00:09:08]  That man is trying to screw this world because he knows he ain't going to get back in there no more.
[00:09:12]  That's why he's spending all that money on all informed companies.
[00:09:17]  He ain't trying to help no people in the poor people in the United States.
[00:09:21]  Every money he's spending is going over there to foreign countries.
[00:09:24]  And then they talk about going over there to Cuba and all this stuff, starting fights and all that stuff.
[00:09:29]  All right.
[00:09:29]  And Wendell mentioned the negotiations and the debate over the SAVE Act that is ongoing in the Senate.
[00:09:38]  They're actually going to be in today, Saturday.
[00:09:40]  They're coming in at noon.
[00:09:42]  And you can watch coverage of that on C-SPAN 2.
[00:09:46]  So that's at noon on C-SPAN 2.
[00:09:48]  The Senate will come in and continue debate on the SAVE Act.
[00:09:52]  Paul, Nampa, Idaho, Republican, you're on the air.
[00:09:57]  Yes, thank you for taking my call.
[00:10:00]  I think there's about three of them that are pretty important ones.
[00:10:05]  The SAVE Act is one, but I think the fact that Schumer doesn't necessarily want to give the $200 billion necessary to finish the adjudicate the war that's currently going on in the Middle East.
[00:10:23]  And I just'm a little perplexed.
[00:10:27]  I think the thing that perplexed me most is wouldn't they have to vote on that instead of just having Schumer saying no and not giving out the money where it's necessary?
[00:10:43]  Yes, they would have to vote, Paul.
[00:10:46]  That is true.
[00:10:49]  You strongly believe that that $200 billion should be given to the Defense Department.
[00:10:57]  Well, I'm not sure exactly where it would be dispersed or it would be best to be dispersed, but it would be used for that specific purpose of not prolonging the war, but maybe ending the war in a fashionable way.
[00:11:12]  In other words, a quick way.
[00:11:15]  And obviously, I'm glad that no nukes have been used thus far and that the use of the nukes that could have been used by Iran has been curtailed once again.
[00:11:31]  It's an ongoing problem, and I believe that it was necessary to do.
[00:11:38]  And I've been alive long enough to remember 47 years ago where I was and what I was doing when I saw that individual walking down the stairs, that United States Marine, with the blind pulled on and almost tripping.
[00:11:54]  So, Paul, what do we do about the 440 kilograms of enriched uranium that's in the middle of Iran?
[00:12:03]  Well, it's in the middle of the trouble that's purportedly in Iran.
[00:12:09]  I think it needed to be kept to the side so that it could be used as evidence.
[00:12:16]  And that way, you've got the evidence.
[00:12:18]  You just don't say, well.
[00:12:20]  Yeah, but how do we get it?
[00:12:21]  I think that's the problem, is how do we get to it?
[00:12:24]  Because if they keep it, then they can always reconstitute and continue a nuclear weapons program.
[00:12:31]  But you did mention Chuck Schumer.
[00:12:33]  Let's take a look at what he said on the Senate floor on Thursday about that $200 billion request.
[00:12:39]  Donald Trump promised an easy and quick war with Iran.
[00:12:45]  He promised overwhelming victory.
[00:12:47]  Three weeks later in Iran, just the opposite of what Trump promised is happening.
[00:12:54]  Last night, a stunning report in the Washington Post revealed that the Pentagon has reportedly discussed with the White House requesting $200 billion, $200 billion from Congress to bankroll Donald Trump's war with Iran.
[00:13:13]  $200 billion so Donald Trump can go to war with Iran is preposterous, unacceptable.
[00:13:21]  Even a fraction of that is unacceptable for a war without a plan, without a goal, without the support of the American people.
[00:13:30]  Let's be very clear.
[00:13:33]  If Trump wants $200 billion, that means he believes we might be in a war with Iran for a very, very long time.
[00:13:42]  $200 billion is more than what we spent even at the height of the war in Iraq.
[00:13:48]  It's more than we have spent altogether in Ukraine.
[00:13:53]  It's an indefensible number.
[00:13:57]  One of the most wasteful and unthought-out budget requests I have ever heard in my time in the Senate.
[00:14:07]  For $200 billion, we could lower health care premiums for tens of millions of Americans.
[00:14:13]  For $200 billion, we could educate a generation and unleash the immense potential of our students.
[00:14:20]  For $200 billion, we could cut hunger in this country in half or more for many years.
[00:14:27]  For $200 billion, we could invest in jobs and science and manufacturing.
[00:14:31]  We could begin fixing our power grid.
[00:14:35]  But instead, instead, the Trump administration reportedly wants $200 billion to go to war with Iran.
[00:14:44]  It is unacceptable.
[00:14:45]  It is ridiculous.
[00:14:46]  It is beyond the pale.
[00:14:50]  Such a large amount of money for a war that no one knows the goal, no one knows the conclusion, no one knows the path that changes.
[00:15:00]  Trump changes all of these things, the goal, the path, the cost, every day.
[00:15:07]  And he wants us to spend all this money?

=== Is This A Fascist Coup In America (15:20) ===

[00:15:12]  That was on Thursday.
[00:15:13]  And a quick update for you on the AP.
[00:15:16]  Britain condemns reckless attacks after Iran fires missiles at UK-U.S. Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean.
[00:15:26]  It says that it's unclear how close the missiles came to the base, which is about 2,500 miles from Iran.
[00:15:33]  Another update, Israel's defense minister says attacks on Iran will be ramped up and war to continue.
[00:15:42]  We got this from Willie on Facebook about his top news stories as gas prices rising as fast as a DAO is dropping.
[00:15:50]  Hegseth wanting $200 billion just weeks after reports of how he recklessly blew through money in September.
[00:15:57]  We are taking your calls and your social media posts if you'd like to join the conversation there and text as well.
[00:16:05]  Here's David, Kent, Ohio, Independent.
[00:16:07]  Good morning, David.
[00:16:10]  David, are you there in Kent, Ohio?
[00:16:13]  Yes, I am.
[00:16:14]  All right, go right ahead.
[00:16:16]  Okay.
[00:16:18]  Here's what people need to understand.
[00:16:21]  Anytime you want to understand what's going on, you need to look at the history.
[00:16:25]  Now, it's often said by people that want the war, they only go back to 79.
[00:16:32]  But in 1979, you need to go back to 1953.
[00:16:35]  This is all historical facts.
[00:16:38]  In 1953, there was a guy named Mossag from Iran.
[00:16:43]  He was democratically elected his people, and he believed the gall of this, that the oil should be, that Iranian oil should be for Iranians.
[00:16:53]  How many Iranians came over and took our coal from West Virginia or took our oil from Texas?
[00:16:59]  So the idea that we have rights to the oligarchs think they have a right to this.
[00:17:07]  So Mossag Day nationalized oil.
[00:17:10]  What happened was the CIA and MI6, that's the British version of the CIA, came in and took over, had a coup and took over the government and installed the Shah.
[00:17:22]  Now, the Shah was brutal.
[00:17:25]  It was in place for 26 years.
[00:17:28]  So, David, familiar with the history, bring us to today.
[00:17:32]  What do you think about what's going on right now?
[00:17:35]  So, bringing us to today, we need to, we should have negotiated.
[00:17:40]  We ripped up two deals.
[00:17:41]  We ripped up Obama because his name was on the deal that Obama had worked out with Iranians.
[00:17:49]  He ripped that up.
[00:17:50]  And then they had nuclear deal negotiations going on.
[00:17:57]  And the guy from the United Kingdom said that they were making progress.
[00:18:01]  And they stabbed him in the back and stopped the deal and then attacked him without warning.
[00:18:06]  That's a war crime.
[00:18:07]  Now, see, I believe that we should use as our political moral compass our Constitution and our Bill of Rights.
[00:18:16]  And remember, our history, we fought against colonialism.
[00:18:20]  What happened was Wall Street became a colonial power, and they're projecting that colonial power on the country.
[00:18:27]  Now, that is not something that we should be supporting, in my opinion.
[00:18:33]  All right, David.
[00:18:33]  And Jeff in Indianapolis, Indiana, Democrat, what's your top news story of the week, Jeff?
[00:18:39]  Of course, the war.
[00:18:40]  And, you know, Chuck Schumer is correct, and the caller from Ohio was correct.
[00:18:45]  This just didn't happen in 1979.
[00:18:47]  This goes all the way back to 1953, like the previous calls to mention.
[00:18:50]  So getting that out the way, I just find it ironic that we got a five-time draft Dodger who is, well, I'll say this.
[00:19:02]  This is just nothing but a distraction because of Trump's connection to the Epstein files and the midterms are coming, and his polls are in the toilet.
[00:19:11]  Okay?
[00:19:13]  So, you know, all you MAGA folks that, you know, who are supporting this, why don't you send your sons and daughters and fight on behalf of billionaires?
[00:19:22]  Okay?
[00:19:23]  And I ask, I am a veteran.
[00:19:25]  I got a bronze.
[00:19:26]  I've seen combat.
[00:19:28]  Unlike your cowardly president, this predator who got us in this war on behalf of Benjamin Netanyahu.
[00:19:38]  And yes, Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal.
[00:19:41]  And yes, I'm no fan of the Iranian government, but you know what?
[00:19:44]  They didn't start this war.
[00:19:47]  Our sons and daughters in inner cities, West Virginia, Arkansas, should not fight on behalf of the Jewish lobby and APAC in Israel.
[00:19:57]  No, I'm not anti-semi.
[00:19:58]  I'm just anti-wrong.
[00:20:00]  All right, Jeff.
[00:20:01]  On the Republican line in Overton, Texas.
[00:20:04]  Robert, you're on the air.
[00:20:07]  Hello.
[00:20:08]  Hi.
[00:20:08]  I'm 81 years old, retired Navy, and I have a wealth of history of information.
[00:20:17]  My main concern now is that we have valid voting in this country.
[00:20:26]  We haven't had that for a long time.
[00:20:29]  Now, I would like to take symbols of our parties.
[00:20:33]  The elephant for the Republicans means memory of Carter LBJ and his playing dominoes in Southeast Asia, getting hundreds of thousands of people killed.
[00:20:48]  And Clinton with the dress.
[00:20:54]  And all the Democrats standing together saying he's our rat, but he's our rat.
[00:21:01]  And then we have the symbols for the Democratic Party.
[00:21:06]  And Democrats, remember.
[00:21:12]  All right, Robert.
[00:21:13]  John in Whitefield, New Hampshire, Independent Line.
[00:21:17]  You're on the air.
[00:21:19]  All right, good morning.
[00:21:21]  Morning.
[00:21:23]  I would say my top news story of the week is all in each news story of the week because as we're progressing, each new outrage is distracting us from the prior week's outrage.
[00:21:39]  And I guess my question to you and listeners is: what is the recourse for our nation when this president and his supporters in the House and Senate refuse to peacefully cede power after the blue wave of 2026?
[00:21:59]  We know that's coming.
[00:22:00]  Everything, if you connect all the dots, including the $200 billion for the Pentagon, what is that really for?
[00:22:09]  Is it for just this week's distraction, which is Iran?
[00:22:12]  Or is it like we've seen with ICE, an attempt?
[00:22:16]  I believe we're in the middle of a fascist coup in this country.
[00:22:19]  So I guess we're holding it.
[00:22:21]  Yeah, I mean, talk us through that, John.
[00:22:22]  What do you think is going to happen?
[00:22:24]  Let's say a bunch of Democrats win.
[00:22:27]  You said that the Republicans are just going to refuse to leave office, like Congress, like representatives and senators.
[00:22:35]  How crazy is it to think that?
[00:22:37]  And yet, how crazy is it to think that a president went and just tore down the east wing of the White House without seeking any permits or permission?
[00:22:45]  Or, oh, wait, launched a war against Iran without any kind of public approval or authorization from Congress.
[00:22:55]  How outrageous is that?
[00:22:56]  So I guess my question is: what will our recourse be when these people, for whatever scenario that shows up, they're already talking about ICE agents at the polls.
[00:23:08]  They're asking for $200 billion.
[00:23:10]  We've already seen this president shift money when they need it, yet they're not doing it now for TSA.
[00:23:18]  So again, if you connect all the dots, this is 1930s Germany playing out all over again.
[00:23:24]  However, I believe this bumbler and thief is more like Mussolini because he, at least Mussolini, had the trains running on time.
[00:23:33]  So we're in very dangerous times right now.
[00:23:36]  And I guess my question is: what is the plan?
[00:23:40]  All right, we heard that, John.
[00:23:41]  And this is Marilyn in Edmonds, Washington.
[00:23:44]  Democrat.
[00:23:44]  Go ahead, Marilyn.
[00:23:46]  Hello, this I sound pitiful because I felt a cold, but I'm an 80-year-old woman.
[00:23:53]  I've seen a lot of this history, and I appreciate C-SPAN for helping me see our elected officials.
[00:24:04]  I endorse Chuck Schumer, what he said on C-SPAN tonight.
[00:24:11]  I agree.
[00:24:14]  I wish more people would fact check.
[00:24:20]  I wish more people would fact check.
[00:24:23]  I called my congresspeople today to say reject, reject this thing about registration to vote.
[00:24:38]  Save America Act.
[00:24:40]  Yep.
[00:24:42]  And I am disturbed minute by minute by what I see on the news.
[00:24:50]  I've been watching C-SPAN for years.
[00:24:53]  And today I've watched since 8 o'clock.
[00:24:58]  And I just cannot believe that we're not paying more attention.
[00:25:04]  I want people to vote.
[00:25:06]  I want people to vote.
[00:25:08]  I want women to remember their history.
[00:25:13]  I don't, you know, remembering other countries' history, even our history, is important.
[00:25:19]  But look, women, look up what we have fought for.
[00:25:25]  You have to get out there.
[00:25:27]  All right, Marilyn.
[00:25:28]  I hope you feel better soon.
[00:25:29]  Steve, Republican, Bremen, Texas, you're on the air.
[00:25:35]  Yes, ma'am.
[00:25:37]  I'd just like to say that Donald Trump is doing an excellent job.
[00:25:43]  Him and Mr. Netanyahu are doing an excellent job.
[00:25:46]  They're doing God's work, and God bless them, and just keep going on.
[00:25:52]  And it talks about it in the Bible, Jeremiah, Genesis, and they're just doing God's work, and all these non-believers.
[00:26:02]  You know, all I can say is when the time comes, you're going to be in a bad place.
[00:26:11]  The Democrats, I'll tell you what they're really for.
[00:26:15]  This is what they've showed.
[00:26:17]  They want men and women's bathrooms.
[00:26:20]  They want men and women's sports.
[00:26:23]  They want pedophiles to be, when we arrest them, when conservatives arrest them, they turn them out and then liberal judges put them back on the street where they can rape children again.
[00:26:37]  Obama.
[00:26:38]  And this is what Mike says on Facebook.
[00:26:40]  Top news story of this week is that the Democrats want to see the USA collapse.
[00:26:45]  Why else would they be against the Save America Act?
[00:26:48]  And why else would they keep the government partially shut down?
[00:26:52]  And this is Stephen in Michigan.
[00:26:54]  The biggest story is Russia trying to extort the United States to stop supporting Ukraine.
[00:26:59]  Russia is giving intelligence on U.S. troop movements.
[00:27:04]  And this is Shirag, Boca Raton, Florida, Independent Line.
[00:27:08]  Did I pronounce that right?
[00:27:10]  Man, thank you.
[00:27:11]  I like to bring up it only costs $400 billion to modernize these bridges that are failing.
[00:27:17]  For example, if you look in Hawaii, these are over 100-year-old dam, and these roads, 5,500 evacuated.
[00:27:28]  These priorities should take presidents, the citizens, versus $200 billion for war subsidiary.
[00:27:37]  I'm just saying we brought these topics up for decades, how the infrastructures will be failing as carbon levels increase in the atmosphere, increases the polarity of the energy in the atmosphere with the sun's radiation.
[00:27:53]  This is basic science.
[00:27:57]  That's all I'd like to say.
[00:27:58]  Thank you, ma'am.
[00:27:59]  And here's Harold, East Alton, Illinois.
[00:28:01]  Democrat, you're on the air.
[00:28:04]  Good morning, America.
[00:28:05]  My top story is the Save America Act.
[00:28:08]  I don't think that's going to save America.
[00:28:10]  I think what we need to do to save America is to change our whole voting system altogether.
[00:28:17]  We need to get rid of the campaign financing.
[00:28:22]  We need to have federal and state-funded elections to where they're not in the pocket of the allegars of this country.
[00:28:31]  They are running these elections.
[00:28:35]  We need to get rid of the redistricting and just make straight lines straight across the state to where you can't just pick your voters, your voters pick you.
[00:28:47]  We need to get rid of these college-educated lawyers that should be making a million dollars a year and working for $175,000 as a congressman for 20 years and get some guy in there that makes like $100,000 a year and has a good brain to him and actually give him a raise of $175,000, make him show up every day and vote on everything individually.
[00:29:17]  You can't have pork in the bill to where it don't pass or you put pork in a bill that will pass.
[00:29:24]  That has to all be done with.
[00:29:26]  We need to get our country back from the Alaguards and have the people.
[00:29:32]  There's things that are going on in our country that are 90% approved and we can't get them approved because they don't want them approved.
[00:29:42]  And Harold, you mentioned waste and fraud.
[00:29:45]  We are having the segment right after this one is about that.
[00:29:49]  So do stay with us for that.
[00:29:52]  Here's Alan, Canton, Ohio, Republican.
[00:29:55]  Good morning, Alan.
[00:29:57]  Good morning.
[00:29:59]  Yes, I'm just talking about the diversion in this government and why we can't come together as one as Republicans and Democrats.
[00:30:10]  This country would be so much better if we would just come together as a unit, as one, instead of being so divided, Democratic and Republican.
[00:30:25]  What topic would you like to see us united on for this week?

=== Americans Need Unity Over Partisan Bickering (15:27) ===

[00:30:32]  Well, I'm just guessing, well, not guessing, I'm saying this war in Iran, you know.
[00:30:40]  We need to come together, get it settled, you know, because right now it's hurting everybody.
[00:30:47]  You know, everybody's wallet is hurting tenfold since this war started.
[00:30:55]  And so would you urge President Trump to end the war?
[00:30:59]  Because there's about 2,500 Marines on their way to the area and more warships.
[00:31:05]  Yes, I know.
[00:31:06]  And that's, to me, this war needs to be ended as quickly as possible.
[00:31:14]  I mean, he didn't look ahead.
[00:31:17]  I mean, in his state of the dress, he was saying how gas prices were the lowest since, you know, what, six, eight years ago.
[00:31:28]  But now they're going to be higher than they ever were if he keeps this war going on.
[00:31:34]  All right, Alan.
[00:31:36]  Let's talk to Jerry next.
[00:31:37]  Walnut, Mississippi, Independent.
[00:31:39]  Go ahead, Jerry.
[00:31:42]  Yeah, I know there's a lot of people concerned with war in Iraq.
[00:31:50]  I am too.
[00:31:52]  But I don't know why people don't really realize if Iran gets a nuclear weapon, they will sure try to kill as many Americans as they can.
[00:32:07]  Now, when you got idiots like that in a country, you know, you've got to, you basically got to take them people out.
[00:32:18]  And that's about all I got to say.
[00:32:21]  Let's talk to Frank next.
[00:32:23]  Castleberry, Florida, Democrat, good morning.
[00:32:26]  Good morning, ma'am.
[00:32:28]  My issue was the Save America Act, and I believe that the $200 billion would be better used to help assist the states in implementing a biometric system to ensure the safety of our elections.
[00:32:41]  Biometric, meaning your fingerprint or your retina scan to determine probably be most efficient, but a fingerprints will do.
[00:32:52]  Okay, and where would that data be stored?
[00:32:57]  Who would have access to that data?
[00:33:00]  Because there's privacy concerns when you talk about biometrics, right?
[00:33:04]  That's an extremely good question because I guess our data isn't even safe in the Social Security Administration any longer.
[00:33:11]  So I'll have to have someone else answer that question.
[00:33:15]  All right, Frank.
[00:33:17]  John, Holy Oak, Massachusetts, Republican, good morning.
[00:33:22]  Apparently, this is what happens when you have oligarchies that have been ruling the planet for at least 255 years.
[00:33:31]  What you have is two sides of the same fascist coin, Democrats and Republicans.
[00:33:37]  And I'm going to tell you what it is.
[00:33:38]  This is the new renaissance.
[00:33:40]  This is a new reset by the Anglo-Saxon project here, who basically is going to kill brown people for their oil and resources in their land because that's what they've been doing.
[00:33:54]  So you got two sides of the same coin.
[00:33:56]  You got the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds, your central bank who've been funding both sides of the war.
[00:34:02]  Welcome to slavery, people.
[00:34:03]  You got oligarchs that are going to just take over.
[00:34:08]  And what's the solution, John?
[00:34:09]  What do you think?
[00:34:10]  What do you think needs to happen?
[00:34:12]  I should say they should open up the Hague, get all the records, all the Epsteins, all the CIA, MI5, MI6, and put them in front of The Hague for crimes against humanity.
[00:34:26]  You're murdering people for profit on Wall Street.
[00:34:29]  Not for freedom.
[00:34:31]  You're not spreading freedom or democracy.
[00:34:33]  You're colonizing.
[00:34:35]  You're colonizing countries of brown people for profit.
[00:34:39]  You're destroying the environment.
[00:34:42]  All right, John.
[00:34:43]  And another item that happened this week was the resignation of Joe Kent.
[00:34:49]  He was the head of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center.
[00:34:52]  And he spoke on Thursday about why he resigned.
[00:34:58]  After serving 20 years, mostly deployed to the Middle East, fighting the wars over there, and just seeing how our country had been lied to and brought down the wrong path in those wars and that we were getting sucked into another one and that the American people didn't have the full story and our country did not have a vital national interest in this current fight.
[00:35:17]  I said, hey, I, in good conscience, can't do this because that was a promise I made to myself probably 20 plus years ago when I was deployed to Iraq.
[00:35:24]  Once I realized after my first couple of deployments that we weren't there for the reasons that our government told us we were there for, I said, if it's ever my turn, if I'm ever an adult in this situation, I ever have a position of responsibility, I will not, in good conscience, send young men and women off to die on foreign battlefields.
[00:35:45]  That was Joe Kent who resigned as the director of the NCTC.
[00:35:50]  Caller mentioned gas prices.
[00:35:52]  This is AAA with today's average is $3.92.
[00:35:59]  And you can follow that and track in your state what the average price is.
[00:36:04]  That's a national price, but you can check your state.
[00:36:07]  The website is gasprices.AAA.com, and you can find it there.
[00:36:13]  Jessica, East Wenatchee, Washington, Independent Line.
[00:36:20]  Hi.
[00:36:21]  How do you pronounce your city?
[00:36:24]  Wenatchee.
[00:36:25]  Wenatchee.
[00:36:26]  Okay.
[00:36:27]  Go ahead.
[00:36:27]  East Wenatchee, Washington.
[00:36:29]  In the House.
[00:36:30]  Yes.
[00:36:32]  So what I would like to address is how to make our nation great again is get rid of the Zionists.
[00:36:42]  Get rid of the Zionist lobby within the government.
[00:36:46]  Ever since they took over, since JFK, everything went downhill.
[00:36:54]  Right?
[00:36:55]  Am I right?
[00:36:56]  America has not been America.
[00:36:58]  I never lived back in those days.
[00:37:01]  I envied the people who did live in America, who got to see America when it was great.
[00:37:08]  So what is going on?
[00:37:09]  Like, why can't we pull out of this war?
[00:37:14]  I mean, why?
[00:37:15]  And why is why is this the person that's in Congress who gave Netanyahu the information on how to, you know, cool, like get Trump to say yeah to bombing Iran?
[00:37:35]  How come he still even has a job?
[00:37:39]  Why are all Jessica?
[00:37:42]  Yeah.
[00:37:42]  Who?
[00:37:44]  It's all over independent media about how one of the congressmen or which is who?
[00:37:50]  No, not congressman.
[00:37:52]  One is in the White House was talking with Netanyahu, giving him information on how to get Trump to side with Netanyahu on this war.
[00:38:11]  All right.
[00:38:12]  And Pete, South Newbury, New Hampshire, Democrat, you're on the air.
[00:38:17]  Yeah, hi.
[00:38:18]  I'm an American Jew and I've always been envious and respected Israel.
[00:38:23]  But, you know, since in the last year and a half and knowing Netanyahu's evil, it's really difficult to see him.
[00:38:32]  But the world's, I mean, he is one of the worst in the world, and he is taking Israel down a path that's going to be unsustainable, their government and everything.
[00:38:41]  But the worst part is he found his stooge, and we know who that is.
[00:38:46]  It's an orange guy.
[00:38:47]  That's the stooge.
[00:38:50]  Now, on another subject for MAGA, I don't understand why every Friday at about 2 o'clock, the airplane gets gassed up and ready for golfing.
[00:39:02]  Okay, this has been going on, and maybe we're immune to it because of him making all the money.
[00:39:07]  And he goes every weekend, and he just beats you up that you become immune to it.
[00:39:12]  But it's not okay.
[00:39:14]  And this guy is not working for anybody.
[00:39:17]  He is a consumer of news, hanging out, holding court, and Profiteering from this war.
[00:39:25]  And the earliest we wake up.
[00:39:28]  And I mean, I think there's a chance after November that he may resign because it's not going to be fun anymore.
[00:39:35]  The blue wave is coming.
[00:39:36]  Trust me.
[00:39:39]  Tom is in Newark, Ohio on the Republican line.
[00:39:42]  Go ahead, Tom.
[00:39:44]  Oh, thank you so much, Mimi, for taking my call.
[00:39:48]  You know, you're gorgeous.
[00:39:52]  My first comment is: a lot of these cops that say they're Republicans, they're not.
[00:39:57]  They're lying.
[00:39:59]  We finally get a warrior in the White House trying to save the entire free world from Iran for future generations.
[00:40:10]  And the left-wing media and the Democrats try to crucify him.
[00:40:15]  Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
[00:40:20]  God saved the brave.
[00:40:22]  He removed a murderous tyrant.
[00:40:25]  Shame on the lying Demarats.
[00:40:28]  So, Tom, when you say you removed the tyrant, you're talking about the supreme leader, Khamenei.
[00:40:35]  There is now his son.
[00:40:37]  And his son.
[00:40:38]  His son is now in power.
[00:40:40]  You still have the IRGC still in power.
[00:40:45]  They're all the murderous regime, as you said.
[00:40:47]  So that hasn't changed.
[00:40:49]  The son's dead.
[00:40:51]  That's already been.
[00:40:52]  Fox News has proven.
[00:40:53]  Three of them that tried to take power are all dead.
[00:40:57]  Okay, but the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is still running the country.
[00:41:04]  No, it's about over, honey.
[00:41:05]  This thing's about done.
[00:41:06]  If we can't put the Marines in that island, this thing's over.
[00:41:10]  So you do want to see Marines on the ground on Carg Island?
[00:41:15]  I want to see Iran never able to get a nuclear weapon because they must be able to do that.
[00:41:19]  Okay, but in order to do that, you support Boots on the Ground?
[00:41:23]  I support whatever it takes to get that horrible country to stop trying to kill us with a nuclear weapon.
[00:41:31]  And they will do it if we don't stop it.
[00:41:34]  Got it?
[00:41:35]  Got it.
[00:41:37]  And something else that happened this week was the Senate confirmation hearing for Senator Mark Wayne Mullen.
[00:41:44]  And this is the chairman of that, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, Republican, confronting Senator Mullen over the comments he made about a violent attack against Senator Paul.
[00:41:57]  Here it is.
[00:41:58]  You told the media that I was a freaking snake and that you completely understood why I had been assaulted.
[00:42:06]  I was shocked that you would justify and celebrate this violent assault that caused me so much pain and my family so much pain.
[00:42:14]  I just wonder if someone who applauds violence against their political opponents is the right person to lead an agency that has struggled to accept limits to the proper use of force.
[00:42:25]  You might argue you were mad and upset about being confronted by your constituents.
[00:42:31]  But Senator Mullen, your constituents are justifiably upset with you.
[00:42:35]  By now, most of America knows that the Somali welfare fraud in Minnesota stole over $9 billion.
[00:42:41]  But instead of defending your vote, you took to continue the vote to continue these refugee welfare programs.
[00:42:48]  You chose to lash out at me.
[00:42:51]  You went on to brag that you'd already told me to my face that you completely understood and approved of the assault.
[00:42:58]  Well, that's a lie.
[00:42:59]  You got a chance today.
[00:43:01]  You can either continue to lie or you can correct the record.
[00:43:04]  You have never had the courage to look me in the eye and tell me that the assault was justified.
[00:43:09]  So today you'll have your chance.
[00:43:11]  Today I'll give you that chance to clear the record.
[00:43:14]  Tell it to my face.
[00:43:15]  If that's what you believe, tell it to me today.
[00:43:17]  Tell the world why you believe I deserve to be assaulted from behind, have six ribs broken and a damaged lung.
[00:43:24]  Tell me to my face why you think I deserved it.
[00:43:27]  And while you're at it, explain to the American public why they should trust a man with anger issues to set the proper example for ICE and Border Patrol agents.
[00:43:37]  Explain to the American public how a man who has no regrets about brawling in a Senate committee can set a proper example for over 250,000 men and women who work at the Department of Homeland Security.
[00:43:49]  Sir, I think there's everybody in this room knows that I'm very blunt and direct to the point.
[00:43:54]  And if I have something to say, I'll say it directly to your face.
[00:43:57]  If you recall, back in your back in my house days, we actually did have this conversation because of remarks that I made.
[00:44:04]  You were in a room.
[00:44:06]  I simply addressed that I said I could understand because of the behavior you were having, that I could understand why your neighbor, by the neighbor, did what he did.
[00:44:15]  As far as my terms as a snake in the grass, sir, I work around this room to try to fix problems.
[00:44:20]  I've worked with many people in this room.
[00:44:23]  Seems like you fight Republicans more than you work with us.
[00:44:25]  I did address those remarks.
[00:44:27]  I did explain your gimmicks by the amendment you put forth.
[00:44:32]  And as far as me saying that I invoke violence, I don't.
[00:44:35]  I don't think anybody should be hit by surprise.
[00:44:38]  I don't like that.
[00:44:39]  But if I do have something to say, everybody in this room knows I'll come straight to you.
[00:44:44]  I'll say it publicly and I'll say it privately, but I'll never say it behind your back.
[00:44:48]  So for you to say, I'm a liar, sir, that's not accurate.
[00:44:53]  And I got proof to say that because you have spent millions of dollars in my campaigns against me because we just don't get along.
[00:45:00]  However, sir, that doesn't keep me at all from doing my job.
[00:45:05]  I can have difference opinions with everybody in this room, but as Secretary of Homeland, I'll be protecting everybody, including Kentucky, as much as I will my own backyard in Oklahoma.
[00:45:15]  It's bigger than the partisan bickering that we have.
[00:45:18]  It's bigger than the political differences we have.
[00:45:21]  The truth is, I have a job to do, and I don't like to fail at anything at all.
[00:45:28]  So I can set it aside if you're willing to set it aside.
[00:45:32]  Let me earn your respect.
[00:45:34]  Let me earn the job.
[00:45:36]  I won't fail you.
[00:45:37]  I won't back down from a challenge.
[00:45:39]  And I'll also admit when I'm wrong.
[00:45:42]  I'm not perfect.
[00:45:43]  I don't claim to be perfect.
[00:45:46]  I make mistakes just like anybody else.
[00:45:49]  But mistakes, if you own them, you can learn from them and you can move ahead.
[00:45:54]  And I'll make that commitment to you.

=== Schumer's Attitude Hurts The Nation (04:18) ===

[00:45:59]  And that full hearing is on our website at c-span.org.
[00:46:03]  If you'd like to take a look, back to the calls now and your top news story of the week, Line for Democrats in Connecticut.
[00:46:10]  Beverly, you're on the air.
[00:46:12]  Yes, good morning.
[00:46:13]  Thank you.
[00:46:14]  I just would like to say that a lot of these people that call in and say that the president's doing the right thing, he's only doing things for himself.
[00:46:27]  And so give me an example, Beverly, from this week.
[00:46:33]  Well, this week, with the war, why is he so close to Netanyahu?
[00:46:41]  Who's controlling this war?
[00:46:44]  The Americans are in deep trouble because of what's going on, and he doesn't seem to really care.
[00:46:52]  But he likes this war because he's going to use it to try to run for president again.
[00:47:00]  And I think it's time people in Washington wake up.
[00:47:05]  And the other thing is, I would love to see more women involved in government because they don't think like most of these Republicans think.
[00:47:20]  Get with it.
[00:47:22]  All we're doing is making enemies.
[00:47:25]  That's all Trump is doing.
[00:47:27]  He doesn't negotiate.
[00:47:28]  He threats.
[00:47:30]  And a lot of countries now are furious with us.
[00:47:36]  And that's going to take a long, long time to get back to where we should be in relationship to friends with countries.
[00:47:47]  He's just amazing.
[00:47:49]  Got it, Beverly, and this is Politico reporting that Putin offers to stop sharing intel with Iran if the U.S. cuts off Ukraine.
[00:47:58]  It says the U.S. rejected the Russian proposal, which has nonetheless sparked concerns in Europe amid growing transatlantic tensions.
[00:48:06]  Let's talk to Paul, New York, Republican.
[00:48:09]  You're next, Paul.
[00:48:11]  Yes, good morning.
[00:48:14]  I want to discuss Chuck Schumer and his attitude.
[00:48:19]  Okay.
[00:48:20]  He's the one in charge of shutting down the entire government.
[00:48:24]  Okay.
[00:48:25]  TSA and SN homeland security officers are not getting paid where we need them the most.
[00:48:35]  I want to know why is Chuck Schumer getting paid not to do a job?
[00:48:41]  He's supposed to represent us.
[00:48:43]  And the way it looks right now, he only represents the Democratic Party.
[00:48:48]  He's not representing the people.
[00:48:51]  Do you want to spend three to four hours align online at any airport?
[00:48:57]  That's insanity.
[00:49:00]  I was there once.
[00:49:01]  I was ready to walk off and go back home.
[00:49:04]  It wasn't worth it.
[00:49:06]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:49:08]  So.
[00:49:09]  Yep.
[00:49:09]  We hear you, Paul.
[00:49:10]  And this is Volcker in Royalton, Minnesota, Independent Line.
[00:49:14]  What's your top news story of the week, Volcker?
[00:49:17]  Hey, morning.
[00:49:20]  Matri Taylor Green, the interview she had on CNN.
[00:49:26]  And the reason why that is my top news story, I mean, a megaphone of our commander-in-chief, a former megaphone, turns 180 degree and says, oops, my own consciousness is more important than my career.
[00:49:48]  And that should set an, I mean, I don't 100% agree with her political attitude, but that turning around 180 degree, the ability to do that and ignore whatever Korea should set an example for a bunch of people.
[00:50:11]  That's what my top news story of the week is.
[00:50:15]  Okay, and this is about that.

=== War Driven By Israel Hegemony (03:38) ===

[00:50:18]  This is CNN.
[00:50:20]  MTG calls war in Iran, quote, a complete betrayal of campaign promises by President Trump.
[00:50:26]  It says the former Georgia Republican congresswoman joins CNN's Pamela Brown to discuss why she sees the war in Iran not aligning with Trump's America First agenda.
[00:50:36]  That's on CNN.
[00:50:37]  And this is Mike in Reston, Virginia, Democrat.
[00:50:41]  Go ahead, Mike.
[00:50:44]  Good morning.
[00:50:45]  Morning.
[00:50:46]  I have two topics.
[00:50:48]  And first one, Save America Act.
[00:50:52]  I mean, people have to use your mind.
[00:50:56]  See, you're thinking, your critical thinking.
[00:50:58]  One citizen who walked 2,000 miles, lose everything, don't speak English, they're going to come and vote for a Democrat and then risk being deported because they'll charge felony.
[00:51:17]  Come on, come on.
[00:51:18]  This is ridiculous.
[00:51:20]  As for the war in Iran, now, remember in 2002, Netanyahu on video said if we take Saddam out, we will have peace and prosperity in the Middle East.
[00:51:37]  And when we took Saddam out, we made Iran a regional power in the area.
[00:51:44]  I mean, this is not about liberating the Iranian people.
[00:51:48]  This is about Israel hegemony over the whole area.
[00:51:52]  They are in Syria, they are in Lebanon, they are there under the pretext of security.
[00:52:00]  The Arab puppet leaders are not doing anything.
[00:52:03]  They cannot do anything.
[00:52:05]  But I'll tell you what, if this war don't take the evil regime, the theocracy regime in Iran, then it was all for nothing.
[00:52:17]  All these things are for nothing.
[00:52:19]  And do you think that that's going to happen, Mike?
[00:52:21]  Do you think the U.S. and Israel could topple the Islamic regime in Tehran?
[00:52:30]  You know what?
[00:52:30]  It's very hard.
[00:52:32]  I don't think they planned for it.
[00:52:33]  We should have had covert operation talking to certain people inside Iran.
[00:52:40]  And it seems like we did this at the urge of Netanyahu without thinking about it.
[00:52:46]  I mean, what are we going to do now?
[00:52:48]  The whole world is suffering because of the economic situation in the whole area.
[00:52:54]  Now, the Arab world, I hear people from my home country in Jordan, missiles going back and forth all the time.
[00:53:04]  Everybody is worried what's going on.
[00:53:07]  And I hope they can do it.
[00:53:09]  But the state of Hormuz is another issue.
[00:53:11]  I don't know.
[00:53:12]  I don't want to risk American lives doing what they're doing in Iran.
[00:53:18]  Look what we did in Iraq.
[00:53:20]  It's worse now.
[00:53:21]  It's worse.
[00:53:21]  It's all militia.
[00:53:22]  It's all loyalty to Iran.
[00:53:25]  Look what Iran did in Syria.
[00:53:27]  And all because Mr. Netanyahu said, if we take Saddam out, we can have peace and prosperity in the Middle East.
[00:53:36]  It is, Israel must recognize that it has to live with peace with the rest of the Arab world.
[00:53:43]  They have to go back to the 1967 line.
[00:53:47]  Otherwise, unless we're doing it on purpose to keep selling weapons and manufacturing and wars in the Middle East, nothing will change.
[00:53:55]  All right, Mike.

=== Puerto Rico Fraud And Federal Funds (04:07) ===

[00:53:56]  And Mike and a couple other callers mentioned the SAVE Act.
[00:54:00]  We have a press conference.
[00:54:02]  We're going to show you live coverage at 11 a.m. Eastern.
[00:54:06]  So it's going to be at 11 a.m. Eastern.
[00:54:10]  It'll be live coverage.
[00:54:12]  Capitol Hill, there's a news conference on the SAVE Act, and it's going to be the Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton speaking to reporters about the bill.
[00:54:22]  And the Senate will be in session at noon Eastern today.
[00:54:26]  So you can watch that on C-SPAN too.
[00:54:28]  But that press conference will be live here on C-SPAN.
[00:54:32]  Millie in Holyoke, Massachusetts, Republican.
[00:54:35]  Good morning.
[00:54:37]  Hi, Mimi.
[00:54:37]  Good morning.
[00:54:38]  How are you?
[00:54:39]  Good.
[00:54:39]  Thanks.
[00:54:40]  Thank you for taking my call.
[00:54:41]  I just want to mention three things.
[00:54:43]  Please bear with me.
[00:54:44]  So the first one I mentioned to the person who took my call is the Nick Shirley investigation that he just did in California regarding the fraud, just like he did in Minnesota.
[00:54:59]  Different home health care agencies being open at a motel area.
[00:55:06]  When he went to knock on the door, all of those offices were closed.
[00:55:10]  But anyways, I just want to make the public aware there's a video on it, a 40-minute video on the investigation investigating the fraud.
[00:55:19]  The second thing is Mr. James O'Keefe that used to be the founder of Project Veritas.
[00:55:27]  Now he has an agency.
[00:55:29]  It's called O'Keeve Media Group.
[00:55:32]  He went out to California to investigate different people registering the homeless on Skid Row in exchange for money for weed is on video.
[00:55:45]  He also put that video out.
[00:55:48]  And the third thing that I just want to mention, which is it has a little bit to do with fraud.
[00:55:53]  I saw in the news that the Department of Energy, DOE, approved a presidential approval to help my country, which is Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico, to help them fix the grid, the electrical grid.
[00:56:12]  And if President Trump, I know that he's very busy, and I know he knows this, but if he's listening, I would ask him to please make sure that that's supervised because like I just mentioned the fact about fraud, there's a lot of fraud happening also in my island.
[00:56:32]  And if they send money, he already mentioned that many years ago that there's a lot of incompetence.
[00:56:39]  And we agree.
[00:56:40]  We agree.
[00:56:41]  If he does send money over to get that fixed, to please have someone supervise that so it does get done.
[00:56:49]  And that hasn't been fixed yet?
[00:56:50]  That's from Hurricane Maria, Millie?
[00:56:53]  No, that's the grid.
[00:56:55]  That's why every single day Puerto Rico loses electricity.
[00:56:59]  We're like a third world country.
[00:57:01]  And is that because the money hasn't gotten there yet?
[00:57:06]  Is that or has the money gotten there and they just haven't done anything with it?
[00:57:12]  What's going on exactly?
[00:57:13]  Mimi, my mom was one of the six economists back in the late 70s, 80s.
[00:57:19]  She used to deal with money sent from Washington, D.C. to Puerto Rico to do what, you know, to pay the employees and the government, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:57:30]  She always tells me, I used to deal with CDs 30 years, you know, maturity of millions.
[00:57:39]  And at some point, Puerto Rico was assigned like a financial board because it went bankrupt.
[00:57:48]  So Millie, I got to move on, but we are having a segment on fraud.
[00:57:52]  I know that that was your major concern.
[00:57:54]  So that is coming up right after this segment.
[00:57:57]  So do stay with us.
[00:57:58]  Tom Schatz is going to be joining us.
[00:58:00]  Here's Lori in Blythewood, South Carolina, Independent Line.

=== Voter Photo ID Debate Continues (04:08) ===

[00:58:03]  Go ahead, Lori.
[00:58:07]  Hi there.
[00:58:08]  Good morning.
[00:58:10]  Anything that has to do with what's going on with this war, so sending 2,500 troops is my news story every time.
[00:58:19]  But I wanted to apply a little bit of logic, if I could, to what a caller said a few calls back.
[00:58:26]  He said that, you know, we have to have bombed Iran.
[00:58:31]  It was the right thing to do and support the president.
[00:58:34]  However, the president has said clearly that he feels like they may soon have a nuclear weapon and could attack us.
[00:58:44]  And so he wanted to preempt an attack, not because it's intel, because he felt it, and soon and probably.
[00:58:53]  So with that logic, why aren't we bombing the other countries that have nuclear armament already completed and ready to go?
[00:59:02]  Russia, North Korea, Japan, China.
[00:59:06]  Because they have nuclear deterrence, Lori.
[00:59:09]  We can't, right?
[00:59:10]  We can't touch somebody with a nuclear bomb because they could drop a bomb on us.
[00:59:15]  They could use it.
[00:59:16]  That's the point, though.
[00:59:17]  He's saying that Iran has this, so we're going to attack them.
[00:59:21]  That's what I'm saying.
[00:59:23]  I don't think he means that they already have a nuclear weapon.
[00:59:27]  He was saying that they're close enough that we've got to stop them before they get a nuclear weapon.
[00:59:35]  All right.
[00:59:36]  Okay.
[00:59:36]  I just, I don't know.
[00:59:38]  Let's talk to Lucy, Eight Mile, Alabama.
[00:59:40]  Democrat, you're on the air, Lucy.
[00:59:42]  Yes, good morning.
[00:59:43]  Thank you for taking my call.
[00:59:45]  I just wanted to mention briefly about the voter photo ID.
[00:59:51]  Yes.
[00:59:52]  Here in Mobile, Alabama, we have been doing this for about 10 to 15 years.
[00:59:59]  You know, when they send your card out to allow you to know what area you're going to vote in, we, you know, show that card.
[01:00:08]  Plus, we've been showing our voter photo ID for over 15 years.
[01:00:16]  So I don't see a problem with it as a Democrat, whether you're Democrat or Republican or Independent.
[01:00:23]  I just feel like it's a wonderful thing just to show that photo ID.
[01:00:28]  Now, as far as passport and all those added things, I might be a little bit opposed to that.
[01:00:39]  But to start off with, if just the Republicans and the Democrats could get together and just say, well, okay, let's start off with the photo ID.
[01:00:51]  Let's just, all states, let's do this.
[01:00:54]  I think it would be a wonderful thing.
[01:00:56]  It would be a fair thing.
[01:00:58]  And like I say, here in Alabama, Mobile, we've been doing this for years.
[01:01:04]  We don't find it a discrepancy.
[01:01:08]  You know, once a person wins the vote, it's all fair the way we see it because we have presented our vote ID.
[01:01:20]  So I just wanted to tell you that.
[01:01:23]  And one last thing, here in Mobile, Alabama, diesel is like $4.99.
[01:01:29]  So you might as well say it's $5 a gallon.
[01:01:33]  So I wanted to mention that.
[01:01:35]  Thank you.
[01:01:36]  All right.
[01:01:37]  And this is Louise, Elmhurst, Illinois, Republican.
[01:01:41]  Go ahead, Louise.
[01:01:43]  Thank you.
[01:01:43]  Good morning.
[01:01:45]  Well, there is so many topics that I would like to talk to.
[01:01:49]  I have so many things in my mind.
[01:01:52]  As you can hear in my voice, English is my second language.
[01:01:57]  I was born in Mexico.
[01:01:59]  And I want to tell people that this is the greatest country that is.
[01:02:02]  Thanks to the job that I've been doing for 30 years in this country, I've been having the pleasure to go in a lot of different countries.

=== Hidden Costs Of The Iran Conflict (09:26) ===

[01:02:11]  And believe me, a lot of people don't say no because they have never left this country.
[01:02:15]  This is one of the best countries that is in the whole world.
[01:02:19]  And I'm very happy to call myself an American citizen.
[01:02:24]  And then what as far as, yeah, a topic for this week, what did you want to talk about that happened this week?
[01:02:32]  Well, the war on Iran seems like people don't understand that China, Russia, North Korea, they don't want us.
[01:02:44]  They don't want us.
[01:02:45]  And who cares if some of the European countries don't want us either?
[01:02:50]  The war doesn't move by, I like you, I don't like you.
[01:02:54]  The world moves an economy.
[01:02:58]  And this is our president who's trying to put things in order.
[01:03:03]  Because for so many years, Iran has been a problem.
[01:03:08]  I'm sure there is a lot of good Iranian people.
[01:03:11]  I'm sure.
[01:03:12]  But that regime is very bad, very bad for everybody.
[01:03:19]  Oh, sorry.
[01:03:20]  I thought you were done.
[01:03:20]  Jeff in Bayville, New York, Independent Line.
[01:03:23]  Go ahead, Jeff.
[01:03:24]  Thank you, Mimi.
[01:03:25]  I'd like to bring to your attention and all the viewers' attention that one of the unspoken horrors of this war is the disruption to financial aid globally because of the blockage of the Straits of Hormuz and other factors.
[01:03:43]  I queried AI to get an estimate from reliable sources, GHO and World Health Organization and NGOs.
[01:03:52]  And if this war continues to April 15th, the total number of additional deaths solely due to the effects of the war will reach 89,500.
[01:04:06]  And 41% of those are estimated to be children.
[01:04:10]  This is, I have a table in front of me of the weekly, week-over-week increase in these funding gap and the aid delivered gap and preventable deaths.
[01:04:23]  I wish C-SPAN would have a program with experts from these organizations, these NGOs, to go over this, because this is a hidden cost that nobody that I see on the media is talking about.
[01:04:40]  And I- So, Jeff, I want to flag to our viewers, this is the IRC.
[01:04:47]  This is the International Rescue Committee.
[01:04:49]  They just put this out.
[01:04:50]  It's a press release with the headline, closure of the Strait of Hormuz and regional airspace closures are heavily impacting aid supply chains.
[01:04:59]  IRC warns of a triple emergency in humanitarian context.
[01:05:05]  And it goes on, if you'd like to read it, it's at rescue.org.
[01:05:08]  That's their website.
[01:05:10]  But it talks about what you were saying, Jeff.
[01:05:14]  I appreciate it.
[01:05:14]  But we need to have some kind of really detailed programming so that people can really be made aware of the disaster.
[01:05:23]  I mean, these deaths are not quite simple.
[01:05:26]  These people are dying of, especially the children of diarrheal diseases, horrible deaths.
[01:05:32]  This is preventable, completely preventable and unnecessary, all due to this war.
[01:05:38]  I just wish that we can have some kind of in-depth programming on that.
[01:05:43]  I appreciate that.
[01:05:44]  Thanks, Jeff.
[01:05:45]  Here's Richard, South Carolina, Republican.
[01:05:47]  You're the last one for this segment.
[01:05:50]  Go ahead, Richard.
[01:05:53]  Yes, concerning the war, I believe Trump did negotiate with Iran, gave them every opportunity.
[01:06:03]  He realizes, and everybody realizes, that they're basically a terrorist organization as a government.
[01:06:10]  And you have to completely define it.
[01:06:13]  And that's exactly what he's doing from a military standpoint and from a government standpoint.
[01:06:21]  And I think we should all get behind the military.
[01:06:25]  They're the ones risking their lives out there.
[01:06:28]  And everybody in the government should do that.
[01:06:31]  I know there are people that are against war.
[01:06:33]  People don't believe in that.
[01:06:37]  Nobody likes war.
[01:06:39]  I don't like war.
[01:06:40]  But it is a terrorist organization.
[01:06:43]  It supports terrorist organizations.
[01:06:47]  When you stop and think about it, go back to 9-11.
[01:06:50]  How many 9-11s have there been since 9-11?
[01:06:54]  None.
[01:06:55]  So people get alive.
[01:06:57]  So, Richard, just a quick question.
[01:06:58]  When you say that we should support the U.S. military, you are in favor of the $200 billion request by the Pentagon.
[01:07:07]  Whatever it takes to support the military.
[01:07:10]  They're the ones risked to their lives.
[01:07:12]  All right, Richard.
[01:07:13]  And later on this morning on the Washington Journal, we'll take a deep dive into President Trump's MAGA coalition and how those voters view the ongoing conflict in Iran.
[01:07:23]  That conversation is with Stephen Hawkins of the group More in Common.
[01:07:28]  But first, after the break, Tom Schatz from the group Citizens Against Government Waste, he discusses the Trump administration's efforts to crack down on fraud in federal programs.
[01:07:38]  And speaking of funding for DHS, a couple of callers mentioned that here is a portion of this week's ceasefire.
[01:07:48]  This is Senators John Kennedy and Peter Welch.
[01:07:51]  They talked about that topic.
[01:07:52]  Take a look.
[01:07:54]  This is such a heated issue.
[01:07:56]  Democrats have been digging their heels in.
[01:07:58]  Do you see a way through this here?
[01:08:02]  Right now, no.
[01:08:04]  I mean, we're having a bunch of meetings that frankly could be emails.
[01:08:10]  I just don't at this juncture hope it changes.
[01:08:13]  But at this juncture, I don't see an agreement.
[01:08:17]  And the disagreement, of course, is ICE.
[01:08:20]  And I think this is a fair statement.
[01:08:23]  Peter can correct me if I'm wrong.
[01:08:25]  My Democratic colleagues want to put major restrictions on ICE, some of which, in my judgment, will render ICE inoperable.
[01:08:35]  Now, if you ask the Democrats, they say they've needed changes.
[01:08:39]  But we're way far apart, and I do not see any resolution right now.
[01:08:44]  Senator Welch, I mean, Democrats have gotten some concessions from this administration, whether you're talking about Christy Noam, whether you're talking about some of the roving patrols and having Holman going into Minneapolis.
[01:08:59]  Is there a certain point where you do need to compromise once, I mean, you're seeing these long lines of airports, you're seeing voters frustrated with this shutdown?
[01:09:13]  No, they're very frustrated, and I am too.
[01:09:16]  I mean, there's two things that I think are really important.
[01:09:19]  One is I want to fund every single thing where we don't have any disagreement.
[01:09:24]  The only place where we do have a disagreement is ICE.
[01:09:27]  And of course, that follows what happened in Minneapolis, okay?
[01:09:30]  It was a tragedy.
[01:09:32]  So I can have a different point of view than President Trump on ICE.
[01:09:36]  And that's a fair and square debate.
[01:09:37]  And voters can decide whose position they prefer.
[01:09:41]  But there's no impediment to us opening up literally every other element of government that's affected, like even the border, TSA, the Border Patrol, the Coast Guard.
[01:09:53]  Why is that not happening?
[01:09:54]  What's standing in the way of that?
[01:09:56]  Because there's a hostage-taking kind of approach, and that's the mutual back-and-forth accusation that we're holding it hostage or they're holding it hostage.
[01:10:05]  But the bottom line here is we really do have an issue with ICE, and it's a complicated one because of what happened in Minneapolis.
[01:10:14]  Well, it doesn't look like the hostage-taking is going to go away.
[01:10:17]  Whoever is the one taking whatever hostage is.
[01:10:19]  Peter's raised a really interesting point.
[01:10:22]  Yeah.
[01:10:23]  And I would agree with him up to a point.
[01:10:26]  Let's open up everything but ICE.
[01:10:29]  Okay, let's open it up.
[01:10:31]  Do you think you could get your colleagues to agree to that?
[01:10:33]  If you humble me finish.
[01:10:35]  But I can tell you what's going to happen next.
[01:10:40]  The Republicans are going to put a reconciliation bill on the floor that only requires Republican votes to fund ICE.
[01:10:49]  And the Democrats don't have the vote stops.
[01:10:52]  Now, that to me is a resolution to this.
[01:10:55]  I don't think my Democratic friends are going to like it, but that's what's going to happen if we do it that way.
[01:11:02]  In a divided media world, one place brings Americans together.
[01:11:06]  According to a new MAGA research report, nearly 90 million Americans turn to C-SPAN, and they're almost perfectly balanced.
[01:11:13]  28% conservative, 27% liberal or progressive, 41% moderate.
[01:11:19]  Republicans watching Democrats, Democrats watching Republicans, moderates watching all sides.
[01:11:25]  Because C-SPAN viewers want the facts straight from the source.
[01:11:30]  No commentary, no agenda, just democracy.
[01:11:33]  Unfiltered every day on the C-SPAN networks.

=== Medicaid Fraud Requires Systemic Reform (15:06) ===

[01:11:38]  Washington Journal continues.
[01:11:40]  Welcome back to Washington Journal.
[01:11:42]  Joining us to talk about the Trump administration's war on fraud is Thomas Schatz.
[01:11:47]  He is president of Citizens Against Government Waste.
[01:11:50]  Tom, welcome to the program.
[01:11:52]  Thank you, Amy.
[01:11:53]  Happy to be on.
[01:11:54]  So just tell us about your organization and how you're funded.
[01:11:58]  The organization was created in 1984 following the report of the Grace Commission under President Reagan.
[01:12:04]  The Grace Commission spent a year and a half, 161 corporate executives, worked with the members of the executive branch, and came up with those recommendations, which would have saved $424.4 billion over three years.
[01:12:20]  We've managed to save about $2.3 trillion since then.
[01:12:23]  It was worth a lot more before the budget got so big.
[01:12:26]  But the organization is supported by anybody who wants to support us, basically, individuals and others who care about wasteful spending.
[01:12:34]  Now, the president has tasked Vice President Vance with waging a war on fraud.
[01:12:40]  What do you make of that assignment?
[01:12:43]  Well, I think anything that can be done to reduce the amount of waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement is great.
[01:12:48]  And there are a lot of recommendations in there that groups like Citizens Against Government Waste, the Government Accountability Office, the Offices of Inspectors General have been talking about for years, which is to overall make sure that money is not being sent to people who shouldn't get it.
[01:13:05]  It's simple.
[01:13:06]  In the private sector, they have internal controls that prevent that kind of spending from occurring.
[01:13:12]  If they didn't, they'd probably go out of business.
[01:13:14]  But you really can't, if you're a business, you're not going to pay someone who didn't do the work that you hired them for.
[01:13:20]  And it's just a simple concept.
[01:13:22]  It's a management question, keeping track of the money, making sure that it's being spent as intended.
[01:13:28]  And then there are lists of companies on what's called the do-not-pay list.
[01:13:33]  They shouldn't get money from any agency.
[01:13:36]  There's the Social Security death file, which until recently, the Senator Kennedy had the bill to make this idea permanent.
[01:13:44]  Social Security was not sharing people who were deceased with the Department of the Treasury to make sure they weren't getting money.
[01:13:51]  I think we've been around, oh, 250 years, and this year is the first time it's been legislation to do that.
[01:13:58]  And Tom, I guess we should delineate the difference between fraud and waste.
[01:14:03]  I mean, fraud is actually criminal activity that would be prosecuted.
[01:14:08]  Waste is, I guess, a bit more subjective.
[01:14:12]  Yes.
[01:14:12]  Well, yes, fraud has a legal definition.
[01:14:17]  Someone who intentionally takes money against the law.
[01:14:21]  Waste, in our view, is money that is being spent that is not going to what either the agency or Congress intended within the confines of a statute or a regulation.
[01:14:32]  And mismanagement is not making, not tracking how the money is being spent and making sure before it goes out that the people or the organizations who are getting the money are following through and completing whatever the task might be.
[01:14:51]  Well, let's take a look.
[01:14:52]  I'm going to play for you a portion of Vice President Vance in the Oval Office.
[01:14:56]  This is during the signing by President Trump of this anti-fraud task force.
[01:15:03]  Here he is, and then I'll get your response.
[01:15:05]  When we first started talking about this problem, the President made it very clear he wanted us to take the fraud problem seriously because nobody had until he was president.
[01:15:13]  We started to figure out one big hole that existed is that the agencies of the government weren't actually talking to each other.
[01:15:20]  So, Treasury would have evidence of financial fraud, but wasn't talking to the Department of Justice about it.
[01:15:25]  Health and Human Services had evidence of Medicaid fraud, but wasn't talking to the Department of Treasury about it.
[01:15:30]  So, what this executive order does is force the entire apparatus of the federal government to do two things: stop the fraud on the American taxpayer and make sure that the benefits that ought by right go to American citizens go to American citizens and not to fraudsters.
[01:15:46]  And, Tom, your reaction to that as far as do you think that that's the correct approach and do you think it's going to work?
[01:15:53]  Well, it is a good approach.
[01:15:55]  It's essential that the agencies talk to each other and provide information about people who are defrauding them to other agencies.
[01:16:03]  It's a pretty big government.
[01:16:04]  And again, inside a company, that is likely to occur.
[01:16:08]  Certainly a small business would be able to figure out who's getting money and who's defrauding them.
[01:16:13]  One of the problems is the incompatible accounting and computer systems that agencies have, that they will not upgrade, that they won't make them work together.
[01:16:25]  There are a lot of examples of that.
[01:16:28]  Health records from the VA and the Department of Defense, they've been trying to combine that for years and trying to make it simple.
[01:16:35]  If you are in the Army or the Navy and then you become a veteran, your record should go like that to the Department of Veterans Affairs, but that doesn't happen.
[01:16:45]  So, interoperability is a big deal.
[01:16:49]  And without information, which is underpinning everything, it is impossible to determine if somebody has or is likely to defraud a federal agency.
[01:17:01]  So, this is a good idea.
[01:17:02]  It's a question of getting the systems in place to be able to literally look at a list that has everybody in one place.
[01:17:09]  But that's never been done, and agencies tend to be a little protective of their systems.
[01:17:16]  And if you'd like to talk to Tom Schatz, he is the president of Citizens Against Government Waste.
[01:17:22]  You can start calling in now.
[01:17:23]  Democrats are on 202-748-8000, Republicans 202-748-8001, and Independents 202-748-8002.
[01:17:33]  Well, Tom, one of Vice President Vance's first tasks was to put a pause on federal Medicaid reimbursements to Minnesota.
[01:17:42]  What do you think of that as the first move?
[01:17:45]  And do you think it'll be effective?
[01:17:48]  Well, that has been reported that there's been extensive fraud in Medicaid in Minnesota.
[01:17:53]  It's likely in other states as well.
[01:17:55]  I think they have probably more evidence there than anywhere else.
[01:17:59]  And of course, doing this should be based on the evidence, not on anything related to politics or not liking somebody.
[01:18:06]  I'm not saying that's the case here.
[01:18:07]  I'm just saying generally the fact should be that there has been sufficient fraud in Medicaid in Minnesota that they have to stop everything and reassess how the money is being sent and how it's being spent.
[01:18:21]  And really, that should be done across a number of programs and agencies.
[01:18:25]  Improper payments, which the government accountability office reports on every year, was about $130 billion in fiscal year 2025.
[01:18:34]  And the GAO said that since 2003, that total is $2.8 trillion.
[01:18:39]  Now, again, not all improper payments are payments that are going to people who are ineligible.
[01:18:45]  Some of them are overpayments, but most of them are payments that should not have been sent in the first place.
[01:18:49]  And NGAO said there's between $250 and $500 billion in fraud.
[01:18:54]  Again, back to fraud.
[01:18:56]  And so this is, there's a lot of good information about what's gone wrong.
[01:19:02]  It's a question of trying to get it right.
[01:19:04]  And that's, I think, with the task force and other efforts being made.
[01:19:08]  Senator Joni Ernst at a hearing last week introduced legislation to require cost transparency.
[01:19:15]  So there's a lot going on.
[01:19:17]  Well, staying with Minnesota after Vice President Vance was tasked to take on fraud.
[01:19:21]  Here is Governor Tim Walz.
[01:19:24]  He talked about his administration's efforts against fraud.
[01:19:29]  This is from the end of February.
[01:19:31]  I've asked again, I've asked the president, we're tackling this.
[01:19:35]  We want to partner with you.
[01:19:37]  We need you to quit firing U.S. attorneys who are good at fraud.
[01:19:41]  We need you to quit firing FBI agents because they carried out their job.
[01:19:44]  We need you to partner with us because I don't know why this is so hard to understand.
[01:19:49]  And I will continue to say this.
[01:19:51]  You can trust me on this.
[01:19:52]  The person who's angriest about this fraud is me.
[01:19:55]  There is certainly no political upside to having fraud in your state.
[01:19:58]  And it undermines the very program that I have spent a lifetime advocating for and trying to implement.
[01:20:03]  And we have got criminals.
[01:20:05]  It seems like the Republicans, the only people they're not concerned about in this are the actual criminals standing with the criminals.
[01:20:13]  This president has pardoned people who took part in Medicaid fraud, who were responsible for paying back almost $300 million.
[01:20:23]  And because he pardoned them, that went away.
[01:20:27]  Tom, what do you think of that?
[01:20:29]  That's a hard argument to make because there is a lot of information about the governor and his team made aware of the fraud many years ago.
[01:20:39]  There was a hearing in 2018, and one of the Minnesota representatives, U.S. representatives, brought it up.
[01:20:44]  That's eight years ago, and it didn't really become a big deal until about maybe six or eight months ago.
[01:20:51]  So it has been ongoing, and not enough was being done.
[01:20:55]  And that's one of the reasons that the federal government had to step in.
[01:20:59]  And what are the typical ways that the money is accountable when it goes to the states from the federal government?
[01:21:09]  What are the things that are already in place and what broke down in the case of Minnesota?
[01:21:15]  Well, a lot of states don't have sufficient anti-fraud systems in place.
[01:21:20]  Again, we're back to computer systems.
[01:21:23]  Funny, we talk about artificial intelligence, but some of the programs, the software systems and the hardware systems in federal and state agencies, some go back to the 60s, and you can't find anybody that knows COBOL anymore.
[01:21:35]  Probably people listening have no idea what that is for the most part, unless you're of a certain age.
[01:21:39]  But you can't find people to program the systems.
[01:21:42]  So there's a lack of upgrade.
[01:21:45]  There's a lack of interoperability, as I've said before.
[01:21:48]  If the federal and state systems were operating the same way with the same information, somebody gets money from a grant and the state knows who it is, they can then see is that person getting it?
[01:21:59]  Are they doing what they're supposed to do?
[01:22:01]  Is it being wasted or stolen?
[01:22:03]  They just don't have enough of those systems in place.
[01:22:06]  Doesn't mean that it's an excuse, but they could do a lot more to get better control.
[01:22:11]  All right, let's talk to internal controls, it's a big deal.
[01:22:14]  Let's talk to callers.
[01:22:16]  Dwight is up first in California, Independent.
[01:22:18]  Go ahead, Dwight.
[01:22:20]  Hey, good morning, Mimi.
[01:22:21]  Good morning, Thomas.
[01:22:23]  Mimi, I think you're coming up on four years now.
[01:22:26]  Joining us in the morning.
[01:22:27]  Yep, I completed four years.
[01:22:29]  Thank you, Dwight, for remembering that.
[01:22:32]  Congratulations.
[01:22:33]  Thomas, I'm here in California.
[01:22:36]  We have this thing that we're called a high-speed railway that the government has been spending billions of dollars on, and I don't know how many years.
[01:22:47]  And we don't even have track laid yet.
[01:22:49]  Back during COVID, California had almost a trillion-dollar surplus.
[01:22:55]  Now we're in a deficit.
[01:22:58]  And down in Los Angeles, they were auditing the homeless money that went during COVID, and they couldn't find $500 million.
[01:23:10]  Now, you can call it waste, fraud, or abuse, but in my opinion, Tom, that's all criminal.
[01:23:17]  How can you lose $500 million and not be accountable for it?
[01:23:22]  So I'm not a Trump fan at all, but shaking up this fraud in the government and all this stuff, somebody needs to take a look at that.
[01:23:31]  Can you comment on that, Tom?
[01:23:32]  And thank you.
[01:23:33]  Oh, great.
[01:23:34]  Great points.
[01:23:35]  I'm going to start with high-speed rail.
[01:23:37]  We wrote with the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Foundation and Reason Foundation report on the high-speed rail system, and I think it was 2009.
[01:23:47]  And at that time, off of memory, maybe it was supposed to cost $12 or $20 billion, and it was going to be done by 2020.
[01:23:55]  Anyway, as you are aware, nothing's been done.
[01:23:59]  And the federal government decided to cut off the $4 billion that was due to the high-speed rail system in the past year.
[01:24:07]  And it's simply never going to work.
[01:24:09]  From the beginning, I'm going to make it quick.
[01:24:10]  California is honestly just too big.
[01:24:12]  If you think of high-speed rail in Europe, it's a very compacted area geographically.
[01:24:18]  So it just isn't going to be what it's supposed to do.
[01:24:21]  The Northeast Corridor, sure, because it's not that far from where I am in D.C. to Boston.
[01:24:26]  You can get a lot of people.
[01:24:27]  You can get things done.
[01:24:29]  And then on the homeless spending, you made a good point, right?
[01:24:34]  It's not criminal to waste money in the government unless the person who is handing out the money steals it.
[01:24:42]  So if you follow what I said, you can hand out money as a government employee.
[01:24:47]  I'm not disparaging now, but generally, you can hand out money.
[01:24:51]  It can go to waste, and there isn't a consequence.
[01:24:53]  And that's the same with Congress.
[01:24:56]  You can waste money.
[01:24:57]  You can have these pork barrel earmarks.
[01:24:59]  You can have all kinds of things.
[01:25:00]  But unless the voters say, hey, you've wasted too much money.
[01:25:03]  We're going to get rid of you.
[01:25:04]  It's not criminal.
[01:25:06]  Let's talk to Ronald in Largo, Florida.
[01:25:09]  Republican, you're on with Tom Schatz.
[01:25:13]  Good morning.
[01:25:14]  I would like Ms. Schatz to discuss maybe for 30 seconds or a minute the federal false claims statute.
[01:25:22]  And I'd like to make a suggestion.
[01:25:24]  In every government office, on every elevator, in every break room, at every time clock, promulgate the false claims statute and then change the name from false claims statute to whistle blower awards statute and watch the fraud that will be exposed.
[01:25:50]  Tom, explain the false claims statute.
[01:25:53]  Right, false claims act is called the Keys Ham Act.
[01:25:55]  And what the False Claims Act does is if you, as an individual or government employee, bring an example of fraud, criminal activity to the federal government, you get a percentage of the amount of money that's recovered.
[01:26:10]  I don't recall off the top of my head how much it is, maybe 10% or so, or maybe a little more.
[01:26:14]  But that we, by the way, we've suggested, Citizens Against Government Waste has suggested over the years that there should be some kind of bonus system for federal employees who identify and expose and eliminate fraud just internally.
[01:26:27]  It has nothing to do with the False Claims Act, just as part of their job.
[01:26:31]  And the agency gets to keep the savings.
[01:26:34]  So that's also an incentive.
[01:26:35]  The KTAM is a much more limited statute.
[01:26:40]  It requires bringing a lawsuit.
[01:26:43]  It requires going to court.

=== False Claims Act And Government Waste (12:41) ===

[01:26:44]  So it takes a lot longer.
[01:26:45]  There are much bigger cases.
[01:26:47]  But simply, hey, you know, there's too many paperclips in this agency.
[01:26:50]  Here's, you know, $150 bonus.
[01:26:53]  That's to us a better way to do that.
[01:26:56]  We got a text for you from Melody in Kansas who says, it seems Republicans rarely look for fraud and waste in the Pentagon.
[01:27:06]  Well, the Grace Commission, where I mentioned the 2,478 recommendations and $424.4 billion in savings, about a quarter of those savings came from the Pentagon.
[01:27:17]  And really the issue with the Pentagon is that every penny that is wasted is a penny that's not going to the warfighters and not helping to protect the national security of the United States.
[01:27:27]  So we have been as an organization pointing out waste in Pentagon spending for many, many years, especially earmarks.
[01:27:35]  We've done a lot of writing about the F-35.
[01:27:39]  And so we've been the second engine for the F-35 as well.
[01:27:45]  So there's a lot out there on the Pentagon.
[01:27:48]  We do wish that they would do a better job of eliminating the waste, making it more efficient, because that would help everyone.
[01:27:56]  And of course, the Pentagon is the only agency that has not completed a clean federal audit since every agency, every other agency has done so.
[01:28:07]  Only the Marines have done that inside of the Pentagon.
[01:28:10]  And why is that?
[01:28:11]  I'm not even sure where the money is.
[01:28:12]  Why is it that they're not able to have a clean audit?
[01:28:17]  Like, is there a reason?
[01:28:19]  I think it's just so big, and it's not the priority.
[01:28:23]  That's probably the simplest explanation.
[01:28:25]  Congress has tried to hold their feet to the fire, but there's not a lot they can do.
[01:28:29]  They're not going to cut off money in the Pentagon if they don't have a clean audit.
[01:28:33]  Cecilia, Birmingham, Alabama, line for Democrats, you're on the air.
[01:28:38]  Yes, I wanted to mention there is a lot of fraud and abuse, but still, this president has got rid of a lot of checks and balances by firing different departments.
[01:28:55]  So how are you going to find out more fraud and abuse if you keep firing the federal employees in different agencies?
[01:29:07]  See, you have to maintain the system of some kind of checks and balances.
[01:29:14]  And that's being lost in this current administration here.
[01:29:20]  And, you know, and one more thing, you don't punish people that need certain programs.
[01:29:29]  They need like Medicaid, Medicare, these programs that are helping the poor.
[01:29:36]  You don't, you don't get, because if there is fraud and abuse, let's weed that out.
[01:29:42]  But don't punish, on the other hand, don't punish the population from certain vital programs that people need.
[01:29:53]  That's all.
[01:29:55]  All right, Cecilia.
[01:29:56]  And regarding the firing of the inspector generals, Tom.
[01:30:00]  Well, every president comes in and does at least a number of those.
[01:30:04]  And while they are helpful, they don't have the enforcement power.
[01:30:08]  I'm again not disparaging their recommendations, but those recommendations must be acted upon by Congress.
[01:30:13]  And a lot of what is being uncovered has been presented to Congress.
[01:30:19]  And if you look at the GAO reports and the IG reports, they, in many cases, say the same thing year after year.
[01:30:25]  A lot of things we've mentioned, internal controls, tracking the money, the cost transparency, like Senator Ernst is doing.
[01:30:32]  You know, those things must be done.
[01:30:34]  And as I said, it requires Congress.
[01:30:36]  I mentioned the bill by Senator Kennedy that the Social Security Administration has to share the death file with Treasury.
[01:30:44]  Again, why wasn't that just done?
[01:30:48]  Lynn Wood, College Park, Maryland, Independent Line, you're on with Tom Schatz.
[01:30:53]  Good morning, Mr. Schatz.
[01:30:56]  I'm calling in particularly in regards to an independent executive federal agency out of Washington, D.C., in the law enforcement capacity.
[01:31:04]  It's called Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency.
[01:31:07]  And there, I was a supervisor there, and it was riddled with fraud.
[01:31:12]  Matter of fact, I had an employee that fraudulently used the government credit card over 64 times.
[01:31:19]  I proposed her termination, and rather than them terminate her, they terminated me.
[01:31:25]  Likewise, I had a peer, high-profile murder cases, and they give the person employee of the year and bonuses.
[01:31:32]  And what you said is exactly correct.
[01:31:34]  You can provide bonuses, et cetera, et cetera.
[01:31:37]  But that was basically bribe and hush money.
[01:31:40]  And I was a whistleblower.
[01:31:41]  I was retaliated against, and et cetera.
[01:31:44]  And I exhausted my rights.
[01:31:46]  However, I think there should be an investigation into that agency.
[01:31:51]  It's under the White House.
[01:31:52]  So it's in Mr. Trump's front yard.
[01:31:55]  As a matter of fact, it's on his porch.
[01:31:57]  And it is, I can't speak for the entire federal government, but I can say that I've seen a great deal of fraud and abuse and waste coming from that particular agency.
[01:32:08]  What do you think, Tom?
[01:32:10]  Yeah, thank you for the information.
[01:32:11]  I was unaware of that agency's activities, and I'm sorry that this all happened to you.
[01:32:16]  And it's not atypical for people who report fraud to be retaliated against, because if you report fraud and the agency gets less money, that means fewer employees.
[01:32:26]  I know that sounds weird, but that is kind of the thinking in many of the agencies.
[01:32:32]  Well, we need to have this money to do our job.
[01:32:36]  And of course, the budget itself is based on what agency spent in the prior year, not how well they're doing.
[01:32:42]  It's called the baseline budgeting.
[01:32:44]  So if you have an amount of money in one year, that's the baseline for the next year.
[01:32:48]  You don't have to prove they did a great job with it.
[01:32:50]  You just say, here's what we spend, give us the same or more.
[01:32:52]  Again, that's a systemic problem throughout the government.
[01:32:56]  And there are a number of members of Congress who are trying to help the whistleblowers and avoid these kinds of things that have happened to the caller.
[01:33:04]  We got this from Sue in New Jersey on text.
[01:33:06]  For years, we've been told by those in office that fraud makes up a small amount of where taxpayers' money goes to.
[01:33:13]  President Trump tells us differently.
[01:33:15]  He says there's massive fraud involving taxpayer money.
[01:33:19]  Which version is true?
[01:33:21]  Well, I'll just look at what the government accountability office said: $250 to $500 billion, and some reports say it could be a trillion.
[01:33:28]  And then they use the word fraud, although I think they probably meant it a little more broadly.
[01:33:32]  But look at it a different way: $7 trillion budget, 10%, $700 billion, 15%, $1.5 trillion or so.
[01:33:43]  So in any organization, you can easily find 10% to 15% of kind of fat or waste or whatever you want to call it, a way to make the whole thing more efficient.
[01:33:55]  And so when you say a trillion in wasteful spending or inefficiency or mismanagement, it's not an unreasonable number.
[01:34:03]  Paul is calling from England, Republican.
[01:34:06]  Hi, Paul.
[01:34:07]  I'm going to speak to you again.
[01:34:09]  Mr. Shats, the question I really want to ask you is: how do you combat fraud in government spending, whatever?
[01:34:16]  You're asking how to combat fraud?
[01:34:22]  So we are just one organization of really maybe two handfuls.
[01:34:27]  There are not a lot of groups like Citizens Against Government Waste that are focused on wasteful spending.
[01:34:33]  Pretty much everybody else here in Washington is focused on getting money from the government.
[01:34:37]  So we do a lot of work in coalitions.
[01:34:40]  We have sent letters to Congress with up to 50 or 60 organizations on various issues.
[01:34:46]  We testify.
[01:34:47]  I've testified.
[01:34:48]  My colleague, Vice President, has testified as well.
[01:34:52]  Sometimes we go out to the states, which our health and science policy director did last week in Tennessee.
[01:34:58]  So we are as much as we can do.
[01:35:00]  We're only 10 people.
[01:35:01]  It's not a big organization.
[01:35:03]  And so we really try to work hard with other groups to make sure that the executive branch and Congress hears what we're saying.
[01:35:11]  And then we rate the votes of members of Congress through a lobbying arm called the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste.
[01:35:18]  So members of Congress are aware of what we think, and we are having somewhat of an impact.
[01:35:23]  But it's a doing, you know, as I said, it's a matter of resources and fighting against much, much more organized and literally organizations with a lot more money to push through what they want.
[01:35:37]  Brenda Democrat, Two Harbors, Minnesota.
[01:35:40]  Good morning, Brenda.
[01:35:42]  Good morning.
[01:35:43]  I'm going to find out what does a citizen do at the county level when the county caseworkers have been alerted, notified, given proof of fraud that was charged to my insurance.
[01:35:59]  And they say, oh, well, we'll investigate.
[01:36:02]  We'll put together a graph and see if your timing is right and if, you know, what.
[01:36:06]  And then they just say, well, we're not going to investigate that.
[01:36:09]  We don't care.
[01:36:09]  What do you care?
[01:36:10]  Because it's not your money.
[01:36:12]  It's insurance.
[01:36:12]  So what do you care?
[01:36:14]  And I'm like, it's fraud.
[01:36:16]  But at the county level, they won't, they just won't do anything.
[01:36:22]  So I don't know what to do.
[01:36:23]  I've been fighting it for over two years and I don't know where to go next.
[01:36:27]  Have you gone to a county council meeting and brought this up, maybe to the council itself?
[01:36:33]  Well, she's not there anymore, Tom.
[01:36:35]  But that would be a suggestion of mine.
[01:36:37]  I always suggest that people go and talk to the local officials and make their case.
[01:36:42]  There are a lot of open meetings, a lot of opportunities.
[01:36:44]  Write to your member of Congress.
[01:36:48]  They have caseworkers in congressional offices who may also be willing to help, especially if you say that somebody locally is not doing what they're doing, supposed to do to help you.
[01:36:58]  Mike, Mechanicville, New York, Independent Line.
[01:37:01]  Good morning.
[01:37:03]  Hi, Tom.
[01:37:04]  I've seen you on here on and off for many, many years.
[01:37:07]  We in New York are worried about two big projects we know are already wasteful.
[01:37:11]  That Second Avenue subway extension, which has been going on for probably 30 years, and the high-speed rail going up the west side of the Hudson, which they're talking about, but they're moving so slowly.
[01:37:24]  I know they've been having trouble buying people out or whatever, but the west side Hudson just seems to be taking forever.
[01:37:32]  I mean, the one that's the high-speed rail, like between New York City and Albany.
[01:37:35]  I was wondering if you could comment on that.
[01:37:37]  And the Second Avenue subway extension, which has taken apparently billions and billions at a half a mile, half a mile apiece to move it.
[01:37:45]  Yeah.
[01:37:46]  Well, I am from New York.
[01:37:47]  I'm from Long Island originally, so I know this pretty well.
[01:37:50]  I came to D.C. in 1974 to go to law school.
[01:37:55]  So, yes, that has been going on as long as I can remember, Second Avenue subway.
[01:38:00]  It's, I think, geographically difficult.
[01:38:04]  It's slow.
[01:38:06]  Every time you wait, it gets more expensive.
[01:38:08]  High-speed rail, I had mentioned earlier, the boondoggle in California, most high-speed rail systems don't work, especially when you're running it locally.
[01:38:16]  And what are you going to save between New York City and the Bronx or New York City and Albany?
[01:38:21]  10 minutes, maybe?
[01:38:23]  And then you have to have those tracks that can hold the high-speed rail.
[01:38:28]  So I said the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak, that makes sense.
[01:38:32]  But beyond that, it's very hard to find any good reason or any successful high-speed rail in the United States.
[01:38:39]  Sandra, New Haven, Indiana, Republican, you're on with Tom Schatz.
[01:38:44]  Good morning.
[01:38:46]  I seem to remember years ago when the Constitution was written, they said that they've given us this constitutional republic if we can keep it, but it has to be done by a moral people.
[01:39:00]  If you're not a moral person, then you're not going to be able to hold this.
[01:39:06]  And I think that's part of what's happening.
[01:39:09]  If you look around at all the looting in the ceiling and people don't care, and they just, I saw a video the other day, they put up a FedEx truck that stopped to make a stop.
[01:39:19]  And 25 people climbed in the back and just took everything, you know.

=== Strengthening National Morality Now (07:33) ===

[01:39:25]  So, what we need to do is do something to strengthen the morality of our country.
[01:39:30]  But what I really called about was things like this.
[01:39:34]  Here's a story today by Lowell Caulfield.
[01:39:37]  And it says, broad report: 89 hospice companies are located in one Los Angeles office building.
[01:39:45]  Now, you know, how can you just look at something like that and know that that's not broad?
[01:39:51]  And that's why we need this birthright citizenship change.
[01:39:55]  For example, here's another one by Becky Noble.
[01:39:59]  Give us your tired, you're poor, your freebies.
[01:40:02]  Nearly half of U.S. immigrant households are on welfare because their children become citizens.
[01:40:09]  And then the entire household can be funded by welfare.
[01:40:13]  And this is the main problem.
[01:40:16]  Here is a U.S. citizen is taking the helm of Mexico's fiercest cartel, exposing the ugly truth on birthright citizenship.
[01:40:25]  All right, let's get a response, Sandra.
[01:40:28]  Go ahead, Tom.
[01:40:29]  Well, those are the kinds of things that we hope that the fraud task force will address because some of them are related to a specific program.
[01:40:35]  Some of them are related to more systemic issues in terms of how money is being spent.
[01:40:41]  So you've just pointed out a wide variety of issues that they should take a look at.
[01:40:45]  Well, your organization, Tom, puts out a prime cuts list.
[01:40:50]  And I want to put on the screen for our viewers Prime Cuts 2025 and ask you about a couple in particular.
[01:40:56]  One is to eliminate the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation.
[01:41:01]  Can you tell us what that is?
[01:41:03]  We actually have on our website an entire page devoted to CMMI.
[01:41:08]  CMMI was created in the Affordable Care Act.
[01:41:11]  It gets $10 billion every decade.
[01:41:15]  And the idea is to create models, payment models for Medicare, Medicaid, children's health insurance program.
[01:41:22]  The intent is to lower costs and improve care.
[01:41:24]  And they have done none of that.
[01:41:27]  They were supposed to save $2.8 billion between 2011 and 2020.
[01:41:31]  They lost $5.4 billion, another $1.3 billion by 2030.
[01:41:36]  So we're hoping that Congress takes a good look at this.
[01:41:39]  We've had a large campaign about CMMI.
[01:41:43]  To us, there really couldn't be a much better example of something that isn't working.
[01:41:48]  They're also getting involved with price controls through what they call most favorite nations.
[01:41:52]  So to say that, oh, maybe they'll do better in the future simply doesn't cut it.
[01:41:57]  So we've been trying to do something with this while working with members of Congress to get some legislation introduced.
[01:42:03]  And another recommendation is to eliminate earmarks for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program.
[01:42:10]  So the F-35 is a long story, but it's not a good story.
[01:42:17]  The F-35, it's being used, but it's not successful in any way.
[01:42:22]  They're kind of moving on to the next generation of fighters at this point.
[01:42:26]  But it was one of the most expensive weapons programs in history.
[01:42:31]  And they have had a lot of problems with grounding them, with not being able to use them.
[01:42:36]  So it's a good chapter to read in Prime Cuts to get all the details.
[01:42:41]  And this is Lincoln, Clarksburg, Maryland, Democrat.
[01:42:44]  Good morning.
[01:42:49]  You got to mute your TV, Lincoln.
[01:42:51]  We can hear it in the background.
[01:42:54]  Sorry.
[01:42:57]  Here we go.
[01:42:59]  Say that the Save America Act is just another distraction.
[01:43:06]  This man will throw the whole world under the bus to save himself.
[01:43:12]  I am so embarrassed.
[01:43:14]  So Lincoln, we've got Thomas Schatz with us.
[01:43:17]  Do you have something about waste or fraud in the government?
[01:43:21]  Yeah.
[01:43:22]  Donald Trump is a fraud and his whole family.
[01:43:25]  I feel that he say this, and he does the total opposite.
[01:43:31]  I think that this is not acceptable in this country.
[01:43:36]  And how can you say that anyone is above the, that no one is above the law?
[01:43:41]  All right.
[01:43:41]  Let's get Alan from Ohio and Independent Line.
[01:43:44]  Go ahead, Alan.
[01:43:46]  Yes, I want to talk to you about the fraud.
[01:43:50]  If you're in an office and you have all this money out there and you're wondering what can I do with it all, you start thinking about how to give this guy a pay raise or whatever.
[01:44:03]  So, and that's a part of fraud.
[01:44:05]  But I think if you're in charge and you tell your other offices to check to find out if you can find any fraud, and if you do find any fraud, just write me a memo.
[01:44:17]  I think all of it gets lost in the paperwork.
[01:44:23]  All right.
[01:44:23]  Any comment there, Tom?
[01:44:25]  Well, I think any reporting of fraud is helpful.
[01:44:27]  I think it's a matter of whether the agencies are taking it seriously.
[01:44:31]  Again, I think the fraud task force, that President Trump would take events, Vice President Vance in charge of, is trying to do more to have interagency cooperation, better interoperability of their computer and accounting system so they know who's not eligible to receive money.
[01:44:51]  Many times you see someone who goes to the SBA and doesn't get a loan goes to the Department of Agriculture, who unfortunately has the same kind of loan, and they get the loan.
[01:45:00]  So that shouldn't happen.
[01:45:01]  All right.
[01:45:01]  One more call for you, Tom.
[01:45:02]  Sue, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Republican.
[01:45:05]  Go ahead, Sue.
[01:45:07]  So, yes, I seem to recall that the president at one point was looking into the Fed and to the Treasury to see how much gold we actually had left.
[01:45:20]  And the Fed chair was just done in a news report stating that he was proud of the fact that the Fed was an independent organization controlling all the central banks.
[01:45:37]  Well, some people would feel otherwise, myself included, because you have a bunch of families, Rockefellers, Rothschilds, all maintaining super wealth from control of our banking and treasury systems.
[01:45:56]  What about that fraud?
[01:45:58]  That's a huge fraud in 1940 against the American people.
[01:46:02]  Let's change that.
[01:46:05]  Last comment, Tom?
[01:46:07]  Not something we've looked into, but maybe it should.
[01:46:10]  But as I said, there are a lot of issues out there that need to be addressed.
[01:46:14]  That's Thomas Schatz.
[01:46:15]  He's the president of Citizens Against Government Waste.
[01:46:18]  You can visit their website at cagw.org.
[01:46:22]  Tom, thanks as always for joining us today.
[01:46:25]  Thank you, Mimi.
[01:46:27]  Coming up in about 30 minutes, we'll take a closer look at voters who make up President Trump's MAGA coalition and how they view the ongoing conflict in Iran.
[01:46:36]  Stephen Hawkings of the group More in Common put out a new report about that.
[01:46:42]  But first, it's open forum.
[01:46:44]  Your chance to weigh in on any political news.
[01:46:47]  You can start calling in now.
[01:46:49]  Democrats are on 202-748-8000.
[01:46:52]  Republicans, call us on 202-748-8001.
[01:46:55]  And Independents, 202-748-8002.

=== Interview With Seth Harp On Fort Bragg (02:46) ===

[01:46:59]  We'll be right back.
[01:47:04]  Sunday, on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. Three-time Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times photographer Doug Mills reflects on decades covering American politics.
[01:47:14]  He talks about photographing multiple presidents, including the 1992 Clinton Gore campaign, President George W. Bush on 9-11, and capturing the attempted assassination of President Trump in 2024, which earned him his third Pulitzer Prize.
[01:47:30]  I've listened to his speech on the campaign hundreds of times, and I knew that when he said something about a chart, I thought, wow, the chart.
[01:47:39]  The chart's typically at the end of the speech.
[01:47:42]  And that registered right away with me.
[01:47:44]  And so then when he gestured over towards the chart, that's when the shots rang out.
[01:47:49]  And when he was gesturing, I was, you know, not as close as we are, but maybe four or five feet back.
[01:47:54]  And I had my lens on him.
[01:47:56]  I was trying to get something of he and the flag.
[01:47:58]  And then when he gestured to the rights and the shots rang out, I was actually taking pictures.
[01:48:02]  And then I just kept my finger on the shutter as soon as I heard the bullets.
[01:48:06]  Three-time Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Doug Mills, Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. You can listen to Q ⁇ A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:48:25]  On this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host Brian Lamb.
[01:48:29]  Seth Harp is a lawyer and an Iraq war veteran and an investigative writer and journalist.
[01:48:36]  His first book, The Fort Bragg Cartel, is about drug trafficking and murder in the Special Forces.
[01:48:42]  Near the end of his book, Harp writes, quote, between January 2017 and September 2022, a total of 15,293 active duty service members suffered drug overdoses, and 322 of those were fatal.
[01:49:01]  The Defense Department data, and we're still quoting, showed that Fort Bragg had far more overdoses than any other military base in both absolute and per capita terms.
[01:49:12]  Unquote.
[01:49:13]  Fort Bragg is located in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and is the largest populated Army base with close to 50,000 soldiers and is headquarters of the secret Delta Force.
[01:49:26]  A new interview with veteran journalist and author Seth Harp about his book, The Fort Bragg Cartel, Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces.
[01:49:35]  BookNotes Plus with our host Brian Lam is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app.

=== Drug Trafficking At Special Forces Base (16:02) ===

[01:49:45]  Washington Journal continues.
[01:49:48]  Welcome back to Washington Journal.
[01:49:50]  We are expecting your calls as you're calling in.
[01:49:53]  A couple of things for your schedule.
[01:49:55]  So right after this program at 10 Eastern, you'll see ceasefire, and you'll hear from Vermont Senator Peter Welch and Louisiana Senator John Kennedy.
[01:50:06]  They join host Dasha Burns for a bipartisan dialogue on the Iran war, the Homeland Security Department's partial shutdown, and the Save America Act.
[01:50:16]  That's at 10 a.m. right here on C-SPAN.
[01:50:19]  Then after that, at 11 a.m., we'll take you live to Capitol Hill for a news conference on that same Save America Act.
[01:50:28]  And it will be led by Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton, Republican.
[01:50:34]  He will speak to reporters about that bill, and we will have that for you.
[01:50:39]  The Senate goes into session at noon Eastern.
[01:50:42]  That is on C-SPAN too.
[01:50:46]  Also, regarding that partial government shutdown, this is Politico reporting this, that White House has revised its DHS offer as talks to end shutdown pick up.
[01:50:57]  Borders are Tom Homan met again with lawmakers Friday night in the Capitol.
[01:51:03]  So that is at Politico if you'd like the details on that.
[01:51:07]  Now to your calls to Rob in New York, Independent Line.
[01:51:11]  Good morning.
[01:51:13]  Good morning, Mimi.
[01:51:14]  Good job, wrangling the masses.
[01:51:17]  Fraud, yep.
[01:51:19]  I think we're seeing what happens when a system is let to be somewhat unsupervised, which is, I think, what's going on.
[01:51:29]  The bigger point I wanted to make is, you know, I think Americans have become so they need spontaneous gratification.
[01:51:38]  You know, the war in Iran's been going on for three weeks.
[01:51:42]  Got to give this time.
[01:51:44]  And you have to look at, yes, there's a high risk something could go very bad.
[01:51:49]  It may, but Americans have always been risk takers.
[01:51:53]  And not to say that we should put Americans in peril for nothing, but look at what can happen if this is successful.
[01:52:02]  The Iranian people are not persecuted anymore, and that whole region can change.
[01:52:07]  Give it time, America.
[01:52:09]  Rob, but when you say give it time, how much in your mind do you think that you need to allocate for this?
[01:52:17]  From a time standpoint, I would say a couple of months.
[01:52:21]  I would hope it would be a couple of months.
[01:52:23]  And from a cost standpoint, how much did we give to Ukraine?
[01:52:29]  How much do we spend to NGOs?
[01:52:34]  The American people are very generous people, but we're being taken advantage of in a lot of ways.
[01:52:41]  And my last question to you, Rob, is the $200 billion in emergency funding.
[01:52:48]  Would you approve that if you were in Congress?
[01:52:51]  I would.
[01:52:52]  You would?
[01:52:53]  Yes.
[01:52:55]  And here's Wilbert Culpeper of Virginia.
[01:52:57]  Democrat, you're on the air.
[01:53:00]  Good morning, May.
[01:53:03]  The American people want to just like to know, if you can fact check, Donald Trump's son Barry, who's living in the White House, when I turned 18, I had to go to the post office to register.
[01:53:19]  Could the American people know if he if he went to the post office and registered for the draft?
[01:53:24]  Because if not, the United States people have a problem.
[01:53:29]  Because he should be the first one online with a gun if he has to be registered.
[01:53:35]  The American people just need to know since we have a war going on.
[01:53:39]  Thank you.
[01:53:39]  Y'all have a good day.
[01:53:40]  Bye-bye.
[01:53:42]  On the Republican line in Orange Park, Florida, David, you're on the air.
[01:53:46]  Oh, good morning.
[01:53:48]  Just to follow up on the waste.
[01:53:51]  Unfortunately, our Congress throws billions of dollars at anything that moves.
[01:53:56]  It's a totally corrupt organization.
[01:53:59]  But I read this week that there's $180 billion was defaulted in the student loan program.
[01:54:07]  $181 billion with a B, not million.
[01:54:11]  The colleges, unfortunately, have become professional scam artists.
[01:54:16]  I mean, we give colleges billions of dollars every year for some unknown reason.
[01:54:22]  Many of them have billions of dollars in endowments, so explain that.
[01:54:27]  And they're offering useless degrees, which is why, you know, so many people can go to college that shouldn't be going to college.
[01:54:35]  And there are a lot of these people that are, these students that are borrowing money are dropping out to go along with degrees that maybe they're not going to be able to afford.
[01:54:46]  So the colleges are very at fault with this.
[01:54:50]  They're offering degrees that aren't feasible.
[01:54:54]  And just become.
[01:54:58]  So David, I have an article on that.
[01:55:00]  This is the New York Times.
[01:55:02]  It says, a record number of student loan borrowers are in delinquency and default.
[01:55:07]  It says recently released data from the Education Department showed that by the end of last year, 7.7 million borrowers had defaulted on $181 billion in federal student loans.
[01:55:23]  Sheila, Watertown, Wisconsin, Democrat, good morning.
[01:55:27]  Oh, sorry.
[01:55:28]  I am not a Democrat.
[01:55:29]  I'm independent.
[01:55:30]  But anyway, I'm going to call on the right line, Sheila.
[01:55:37]  I told her what I was.
[01:55:39]  Okay, but you have to actually dial the right number.
[01:55:42]  So independents are on 202-748-8002.
[01:55:48]  But go ahead.
[01:55:49]  So this time, go ahead.
[01:55:50]  Okay, thank you.
[01:55:54]  I was raised with a father born in 1908.
[01:55:57]  I even had it out house in my lifetime.
[01:55:59]  So I'm 67 years old, and I threw away my vote way back when Ross Perot was running.
[01:56:07]  And I just, I'm so sick and tired of the D and the R.
[01:56:12]  And I agree, I also agree with the previous person about the corruption in our government.
[01:56:20]  And I've spoken to quite a few young people, and I find that they just don't even believe in the government, which just like sets me back so badly.
[01:56:33]  And even now, you mentioned about the people on the not students not fulfilling what they owe.
[01:56:41]  I think it's gotten to be where young people just, there's nothing for them to look forward to.
[01:56:48]  And to be honest, it's like, well, it doesn't get rewarded.
[01:56:54]  I used to work at the high school, so I kind of know.
[01:56:57]  And so anyway, the labeling, I am so sick and tired of it.
[01:57:02]  And also, it's really sad that young people don't believe in their government.
[01:57:08]  And the Congress has gotten so corrupt.
[01:57:11]  And here's Gary on the Independent Line, Meridian, Connecticut.
[01:57:14]  You're on the air, Gary.
[01:57:15]  Yes, good morning, Mimi.
[01:57:17]  I have just two quick things I'd like to mention.
[01:57:20]  Yesterday, I watched B.B. Netanyahu speaking on C-SPAN.
[01:57:25]  And during the course of his speech, he revealed something I thought was astonishing.
[01:57:31]  He said very clearly that Iran was behind the two assassination attempts on President Trump.
[01:57:39]  Seems to me that would be major news.
[01:57:42]  That's one thing.
[01:57:44]  The second thing is all this business about the Epstein files and to find out if Donald Trump is a molester.
[01:57:51]  Well, we know he is.
[01:57:53]  He clearly stated on an access Hollywood tape almost 10 years ago that as the person who ran beauty pageants, he could go in the dressing rooms, and I won't use the phrase he used, but essentially to grab these young women by their genitalia.
[01:58:10]  So what more do we need to know?
[01:58:13]  But the thing about Iran being behind the assassination, the two assassination attempts, you know.
[01:58:20]  So, Gary, I think what that might be two separate things.
[01:58:25]  So there was the two assassination attempts, the shooting, and then the thing at the golf course.
[01:58:31]  But I think intelligence is pointing to Iran having tried to assassinate President Trump, but not during those two that we're thinking of.
[01:58:44]  That was not clear.
[01:58:46]  He said, he strictly said two, they were behind the two assassination attempts.
[01:58:53]  So if that's the case, then it's very ambiguous wording.
[01:58:57]  Okay.
[01:58:58]  And this is Trish, Seattle, Washington, Democrat.
[01:59:01]  Go ahead, Trish.
[01:59:03]  Hi, everybody.
[01:59:05]  Hey, I'm just calling to talk about something great that happened.
[01:59:09]  Happy to see that Judge Freeman in a 40-page ruling wrote that Pentagon's policy rewarded reporters who were willing to publish only stories.
[01:59:20]  The judge said that that's violating their First and Fifth Amendment rights.
[01:59:25]  So go to Judge Freeman.
[01:59:27]  And then also, glad to see that the voice of America and Carrie's Lake symbolic behavior was voted illegal as well.
[01:59:38]  So yay, them.
[01:59:39]  And then one last thing.
[01:59:41]  I would just like to say I call my congresspeople, my senators, even senators that are working on a bill.
[01:59:48]  Particularly the senators have eight different offices, and you call them any time of the day, any day of the week, and not one person can pick up the phone.
[01:59:59]  Isn't that waste fraud and abuse?
[02:00:01]  They tell you to email it in.
[02:00:03]  Really?
[02:00:04]  Then why do we have those people sitting there?
[02:00:06]  Can't we just get AI to do their job?
[02:00:08]  Because they're not even answering the phone.
[02:00:11]  So that's really frustrating.
[02:00:13]  That's not America working for us.
[02:00:16]  So Trish, you gave me a really good segue to a Voice of America reporter.
[02:00:22]  We are going to be talking about that topic that you mentioned.
[02:00:26]  So stay with us for that.
[02:00:27]  And then this is on the New York Times about the Pentagon reporters.
[02:00:33]  So this is, you remember that that was a case brought by the New York Times, and this is what it says.
[02:00:39]  Pentagon restrictions on press unconstitutional adjudge rules.
[02:00:43]  It says this came out on Friday.
[02:00:45]  It says the Pentagon's restrictions on the news media violated the First Amendment, issued an order tossing parts of the department's policy, handing a victory to the New York Times, which filed suit in December over the restrictions.
[02:00:59]  Judge Friedman, U.S. District Court of D.C., also ordered the Pentagon to restore the press passes of seven journalists for the Times.
[02:01:07]  They had surrendered those passes in October instead of signing the policy, which empowered the Pentagon to declare journalists security risks and revoke their press passes if they engage in any conduct that the Pentagon believes threatens national security.
[02:01:23]  Judge wrote that the Pentagon's policy rewarded reporters who were, quote, willing to publish only stories that are favorable to or spoon-fed by the department leadership.
[02:01:34]  You can read that at the New York Times.
[02:01:36]  Let's hear from John, a Republican in Mystic, Mastic, New York.
[02:01:43]  Thank you for having me and I just want to say God bless America and God bless all the lost soldiers.
[02:01:50]  I'm calling because you talk about the shutdown.
[02:01:54]  You know, we're talking about the shutdown, the TSA guys not being paid.
[02:01:59]  But yet we had open borders.
[02:02:01]  We were giving all the illegals all our money and we can't pay the TSA guys in our Coast Guard.
[02:02:07]  That's a disgrace.
[02:02:08]  That's a disgrace.
[02:02:10]  You know, everybody's blaming Trump, We wouldn't be in this predicament if Biden didn't have open borders.
[02:02:18]  And it's just sad that we're in this predicament.
[02:02:21]  And, you know, and if we can't pay our TSA guys, now I'm a Republican.
[02:02:26]  Democrats and Republicans shouldn't get paid.
[02:02:29]  Period.
[02:02:30]  Period.
[02:02:30]  They shouldn't get paid.
[02:02:32]  End of story.
[02:02:33]  And these liberal judges should be fired.
[02:02:35]  Fired.
[02:02:36]  And to end the immigration, to stop the TS, I mean, ICE, let's call in our military and let's do a sweep and end it for once and for all.
[02:02:45]  That's what we should do.
[02:02:46]  All right, John.
[02:02:47]  And if you're on the line, please do stay with us.
[02:02:50]  We will come back to your calls.
[02:02:51]  But we are going to be speaking to Patty Wittekaswara.
[02:02:56]  She is the White House Bureau Chief for the Voice of America.
[02:03:00]  Patsy, welcome to the program.
[02:03:02]  Thank you for having me.
[02:03:04]  Okay, so get us up to date on first, since Voice of America does not air in the United States, tell us who you are and how the organization is funded.
[02:03:16]  Well, we've been funded by your tax dollars for the past 83 years, enjoying bipartisan support from both parties.
[02:03:25]  We are an international broadcasting organization, and we broadcast in 49 languages around the world in 100 plus countries.
[02:03:34]  And we have about 360 million weekly global audience.
[02:03:39]  That is until March 2025, when President Trump put out an executive order dismantling essentially our parent network, the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
[02:03:49]  And then a day later, we were all put on admin leave.
[02:03:53]  So my colleagues and I fought in court.
[02:03:55]  And last night, the judge just gave us one of the best news that we've heard so far.
[02:04:00]  We've had fantastic news these past two weeks from the court.
[02:04:03]  But last night, basically, the judge ruled that the order, the request for the government to stay his order to bring us back to work has been denied.
[02:04:13]  So that means beginning on Monday, the government, the USAGM, has to start enacting a plan for us to return to work.
[02:04:20]  There's hundreds of my colleagues who cannot wait to go back to work, to return to our mandate to tell America's story to the world through factual balance and comprehensive journalism.
[02:04:30]  So Patsy, this was during the Doge era that there was about 1,000 journalists that were laid off from Voice of America, placed on leave, and eventually laid off.
[02:04:43]  So what does that mean for Monday?
[02:04:45]  Are you going back to work or has that decision been stayed for now for another two weeks?
[02:04:51]  No, the government, the judge ruled last night that basically he denies their motion for a stay.
[02:04:57]  So that means they have to start bringing us back to work.
[02:05:01]  Now, the government did say that it is logistically impossible to bring all hundreds of us back to work on Monday because we don't have badges.
[02:05:09]  They confiscated our ID badges.
[02:05:11]  They confiscated our laptop phones, equipment, turned off all the satellites.
[02:05:18]  So this is a huge waste of taxpayers' money.
[02:05:20]  I mean, we understand the logistical challenge of bringing us back to work, but why did you have to take away all our equipment in the first place?
[02:05:27]  Why did you have to put us staying at home for a whole year while being paid on admin leave when there is actual work to do?
[02:05:35]  So while we are grateful for this decision and we are looking forward to going back to work, we do regret the fact that this is going to be a big waste of taxpayers' money.
[02:05:44]  And now bringing us back is going to take money and going to take some time.

=== Restoring Voice Of America Journalism (05:21) ===

[02:05:48]  But what's going to be even more difficult is to regain the trust and the audience share of VOA around the world.
[02:05:54]  How do we go back to getting the 360 million weekly global audience that has not heard anything from us largely for the past year?
[02:06:04]  So that's going to be the bigger challenge.
[02:06:06]  So going back to the money part, Patsy, the actual budget of the Voice of America, is it's about 200 million.
[02:06:15]  How much is it exactly?
[02:06:17]  Yeah, it's about $200 million.
[02:06:19]  That's FY 2026.
[02:06:21]  That's a little bit less, about 20% less than previous years.
[02:06:24]  But if you calculate that, that's still about $1.50 per American taxpayer per year.
[02:06:32]  So think about that for less than a third of your cup of cappuccino for a whole year, you can fund good journalism that helps not only bring free press around the world, which of course is foundational to democracy.
[02:06:45]  And I believe something that all Americans should support, but it's also supporting this formidable tool of American soft power, bringing information around the world, bringing the U.S. narrative in the global information space.
[02:06:57]  And we haven't done that for the past year.
[02:06:59]  And in the meantime, our adversaries, such as Russia and China, is actually ramping up their propaganda efforts.
[02:07:06]  So this is something that is the next phase of our fight for us to continue producing journalism and not propaganda.
[02:07:13]  So Voice of America has a Persian service.
[02:07:16]  And my question to you is, have they been able to continue broadcasting into Iran?
[02:07:23]  Is that signal getting to people?
[02:07:26]  What do you know about that?
[02:07:28]  Yeah, so my colleagues from the Persian service have been brought back for these past couple of months.
[02:07:34]  And they have been broadcasting television as well as radio.
[02:07:37]  But, you know, they really are a shell of their former self.
[02:07:42]  I mean, all of us are.
[02:07:44]  This was a functioning news organization.
[02:07:47]  It's not perfect.
[02:07:48]  I don't think any organization is perfect.
[02:07:50]  But then, you know, Kerry Lake and USAGM basically smashed it on the president's orders.
[02:07:55]  So they have been producing limited broadcasting.
[02:08:00]  I don't exactly know how, whether they are reaching the people of Iran, but it's very difficult because they're operating on a skeleton crew.
[02:08:09]  They do not have the resources that we would normally have.
[02:08:12]  They have not been able to send reporters in Iran or anywhere in the region.
[02:08:17]  We don't have a standards editor.
[02:08:19]  And don't forget that these are my colleagues who are operating under pressure, knowing that the administration may be looking over their shoulder.
[02:08:26]  And that is the biggest challenge for us to make sure that we as journalists will be able to continue to do journalism and not be worried about reporting whether it pleases the administration or not, because that is not our mandate according to that.
[02:08:41]  Patsy, do you know how many Iranians are watching or listening to Voice of America right now?
[02:08:47]  Not right now.
[02:08:48]  I mean, I have no access to any of that information.
[02:08:50]  I've been shut out for the whole year.
[02:08:52]  And again, you know, there are parts of the U.S. Agency for Global Media that does all of that, the research and then the making sure that signals gets passed through and all of that.
[02:09:03]  But those people have also been on leave for the past year.
[02:09:06]  So it's unclear whether the Iranian people are receiving the kind of journalism that we would have been producing.
[02:09:13]  And if you look at the VOA Persian website, you see that a lot of the coverage largely reflects the administration's point of view.
[02:09:20]  This goes back to my earlier point of they do not have, my colleagues do not have the resources to produce journalism.
[02:09:28]  Now, if you think about it, the reason why people around the world turn to VOA is because they know that we will produce, give them straight-up news and not the administration's point of view, not just the administration's point of view.
[02:09:40]  And so that is also a big reason why we need to rebuild our reputation to bring our audience back.
[02:09:45]  And Patsy, finally, the New York Times is reporting that Newsmax director Chris Wallace was named as VOA's next deputy director.
[02:09:55]  How will the Voice of America fare under his leadership, do you think?
[02:09:59]  Well, there's a few people that's been put in place, not just the deputy director, but also, you know, acting CEO and also the Under Secretary of Public Diplomacy, Sarah Rogers, will be nominated as the new CEO.
[02:10:13]  I'm going to say that my co-plaintives and I, my colleagues and I, I myself personally especially, I'm going to withhold judgment on any of the new leadership.
[02:10:22]  What we would expect is that, you know, anybody, whether it's in leadership or anyone who works for Voice of America, we are governed by the same set of rules and the same set of laws that govern our mandate.
[02:10:35]  And we expect the leadership to also follow that mandate, which is to tell America's story objectively and factually.
[02:10:43]  Patsy Wida Caswara, Voice of America's White House Bureau Chief, thanks so much for joining us today.
[02:10:50]  My pleasure.
[02:10:51]  Thank you.
[02:10:52]  We are going back to Open Forum now and talk to Jason, Rocky Mountain, North Carolina, Independent Line.
[02:10:58]  Jason, you're on the air.
[02:11:00]  Good morning.
[02:11:01]  I just want to read six tweets from a projector.
[02:11:07]  He's Donald Trump.

=== Bridging The Political Divide In America (11:36) ===

[02:11:09]  In 2011, November, he said that Barack Obama will attack Iran in the not too distant future because it will help him win the election.
[02:11:18]  And September, July of 2012, he said, just predicted Barack Obama is preparing an apostle attack on Iran before November.
[02:11:27]  In August 16th, 2012, I always said Barack Obama would attack Iran in some form prior to the election.
[02:11:35]  In September 16, 2013, I predict Obama will at some point attack Iran to save face.
[02:11:45]  September 25th, 2013.
[02:11:48]  Remember what I preach to said, Obama will attack Iran to show how tough he is.
[02:11:51]  And finally, remember I predicted a long time ago, President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly, not skill, November 11th, 2013.
[02:12:02]  So my point is, this guy is the ultimate projector.
[02:12:06]  He just is now, he's telling, I mean, he's his car, he can tell his tale now.
[02:12:11]  He's telling that, oh, we're about to wind up the war, yet he's sending, you know, 2,500 Marines over there.
[02:12:18]  So he's not, nobody's being fooled by him anymore.
[02:12:22]  I just want everyone to know, and if you can, this would be an excellent time to do this.
[02:12:26]  If you can, at some point, during the show this morning, pull up, if you don't mind, Army Talk Orientation Fact Sheet 64 for the viewers so you can read some things off of it about how to spot fascism.
[02:12:39]  It's a lot of good things here.
[02:12:40]  It was in 1945.
[02:12:42]  They gave it to soldiers.
[02:12:43]  Donald Trump is the antithesis of what they looked out for, that he would come under the guise of super patriotism.
[02:12:53]  And I believe that if you put that up, you will probably change a lot of the MACRA people's minds of what, because, you know, he didn't even run on this war.
[02:13:02]  If he was going to run on it, he should have ran on it in the election.
[02:13:06]  Well, Jason, we will be talking about that same topic in our next segment after Open Forum.
[02:13:13]  And do stay with us for that.
[02:13:15]  Cheryl, Mount Pulaski, Illinois, Democrat.
[02:13:19]  Go ahead, Cheryl.
[02:13:21]  Hi, if memory serves me.
[02:13:24]  At the beginning of the Trump administration, we got rid of the attorney generals, the inspector generals, excuse me, inspector generals, who monitored the fraud, the ethics of all these organizations, all these in every part of our government.
[02:13:42]  And they were gotten rid of when we dismissed all these federal workers.
[02:13:48]  And isn't it ironic now they're talking about fraud and abuse when we had things in place that did some good to us.
[02:13:57]  Then we had nothing.
[02:13:59]  And now we have to talk about fraud and abuse when we have taken all the federal people who were the monitors of this.
[02:14:06]  This is typical of a catch-22.
[02:14:09]  You destroy the system, then you complain about the system that's destroyed.
[02:14:14]  And yes, we needed those inspector generals to keep a finger on what was going on in each one of these agencies.
[02:14:20]  And they're gone now for the most part.
[02:14:22]  So remember, when you break something, you create something.
[02:14:26]  So thank you.
[02:14:28]  On the independent line in Indiana, Rick, good morning.
[02:14:33]  Good morning, ma'am.
[02:14:34]  And how are you?
[02:14:37]  How are you?
[02:14:38]  Yeah, I'm great.
[02:14:39]  Go ahead, Rick.
[02:14:41]  Okay, ma'am.
[02:14:42]  I'm pressing for time here, but you remember Kamala Harris and the presidential debate with Donald Trump, where she said that he won't follow the Constitution.
[02:14:55]  He's going to do what he wants.
[02:14:57]  And she said, you wait and see.
[02:15:00]  He will start a war over Iran.
[02:15:03]  She hit the nail on the head there, didn't she?
[02:15:07]  I'll tell you something right now.
[02:15:09]  Donald Trump will not finish his term in 2026.
[02:15:14]  Not from assassination.
[02:15:17]  Not from impeachment.
[02:15:21]  He just won't.
[02:15:22]  You just wait.
[02:15:23]  I got a funny feeling.
[02:15:24]  He will not finish his thing because he has ruined so many people's lives.
[02:15:31]  You think he's going to resign?
[02:15:33]  I don't know.
[02:15:35]  But something ain't right.
[02:15:36]  I mean, look at him.
[02:15:37]  He looks like death warmed over.
[02:15:40]  But I tell you, he's, nah, he ain't going to, he ain't going to do it.
[02:15:46]  And Vance ain't going to be any better.
[02:15:49]  But anyway, how's people feel voting for Republicans?
[02:15:53]  How did they feel?
[02:15:54]  Oh, they love him.
[02:15:55]  Oh, yeah, they love him.
[02:15:58]  Yeah, the gas bill must be cheap.
[02:16:00]  Utility bills are cheap with them.
[02:16:03]  They are not.
[02:16:04]  So wait, Rick, I just look this up.
[02:16:07]  So this is what Snope says.
[02:16:09]  It says that there's a popular social media rumor circulating as tensions rose over U.S. involvement in the Israel-Iran conflict.
[02:16:17]  It says Harris did not say, quote, if we elect Trump, we will be at war within six months.
[02:16:24]  That was published in June of 2025.
[02:16:28]  Just so you know, you're aware of that.
[02:16:30]  Kevin, West Virginia, Align for Democrats.
[02:16:33]  Good morning.
[02:16:34]  Good morning.
[02:16:38]  I understand things are going bad for all of us because of this.
[02:16:41]  But this is what I have never understood.
[02:16:44]  Every single time that they say it's a crisis and gas prices go up, every time, all of a sudden, all the old companies, when they come out with a quarterly profits, have made millions and billions of dollars.
[02:17:04]  Now, how can that be if the price is going up and nobody's making any extra money off of it?
[02:17:10]  How come all of a sudden the profits are just going crazy?
[02:17:14]  Every single time, doesn't matter who's president, doesn't matter anything.
[02:17:19]  Why does that happen?
[02:17:22]  Here's Dan in Youngstown, Ohio, Republican.
[02:17:25]  Good morning, Dan.
[02:17:27]  Okay, so I want to remind everybody, John Fetterman made a statement.
[02:17:34]  John Fetterman said, every single senator on the Democratic side, every single one of them made statements in the past that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.
[02:17:52]  Every single senator.
[02:17:54]  Now, we went through Clinton, Obama, and Biden, who could not prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
[02:18:06]  They were on the cusp of doing so when Donald Trump came into office.
[02:18:14]  Finally, finally, somebody did something about it.
[02:18:19]  Do people not understand that the Iranians have said over and over again that they will use a nuclear bomb on Israel?
[02:18:30]  They will use a nuclear weapon on the United States.
[02:18:35]  They've told us that.
[02:18:37]  They sit there and say, death to America.
[02:18:40]  They chanted this while Obama handed over billions of dollars to them.
[02:18:46]  They were chanting death to America.
[02:18:49]  He admitted, this is kind of embarrassing.
[02:18:52]  I'm handing you over cash, and you're chanting death to America.
[02:18:58]  That's what Obama.
[02:18:59]  And Dan, this is the latest on that, on the Iran conflict from the AP.
[02:19:05]  Iran fires missiles at UK-U.S. Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean.
[02:19:12]  And it says also here as an update, Prime Minister Netanyahu said Israel will refrain from any further attacks on the Iranian gas field at the request of President Trump.
[02:19:25]  Here in Gannath in Arizona, Independent Line, good morning.
[02:19:32]  Yes, good morning, Mimi.
[02:19:33]  I so enjoy your program, and thank you for taking my call.
[02:19:38]  I just want to remind people of the $600 toilet seats that the military, I cannot believe that the Trump administration is interested in investigating waste and fraud, which is mostly money that goes to us, when the military gets away with is not even audited that much that I know about.
[02:20:00]  And also, I wanted to remind people that Israel has a nuclear weapon.
[02:20:05]  Why don't we talk about nuclear disarmament in that area totally?
[02:20:10]  I know I'm kind of far out, but I'm 84 years old, and I would certainly like to see a peaceful world before I leave it.
[02:20:18]  So thank you for letting me know.
[02:20:21]  What's happening with the heat wave that you're having in Arizona?
[02:20:26]  Well, it's not as bad as summer because the humidity is low, but I'm certain people are suffering with having to turn on their air conditioning in just a human way.
[02:20:38]  But yes, it's hot here.
[02:20:41]  Okay, we wish you well.
[02:20:43]  And here's George in Pennsylvania, Democrat.
[02:20:45]  Go ahead, George.
[02:20:47]  Yes, I think there should be a 10% billionaires war tax.
[02:20:52]  These are the people who are making the money.
[02:20:55]  The billionaires in the United States work $6.6 trillion.
[02:21:01]  You take that $660 billion that we can use for the war.
[02:21:09]  It won't hurt the American public.
[02:21:12]  It's the billionaires have more to lose than anybody else.
[02:21:15]  Thank you.
[02:21:16]  All right.
[02:21:17]  And that does it for Open Forum.
[02:21:19]  Coming up after the break, we'll take a deep dive into President Trump's MAGA coalition and how those voters view the ongoing conflict in Iran.
[02:21:28]  That conversation with Stephen Hawkins of the group More in Common right after this break.
[02:21:39]  Best ideas and best practices can be found anywhere.
[02:21:42]  We have to listen so we can govern better.
[02:21:44]  Democracy depends on heavy doses of civility.
[02:21:47]  You can fight and still be friendly.
[02:21:50]  Bridging the divide in American politics.
[02:21:52]  You know, you may not agree with a Democrat on everything, but you can find areas where you do agree.
[02:21:56]  He's a pretty likable guy as well.
[02:21:57]  Chris Kins and I are actually friends.
[02:21:59]  He votes wrong all the time, but we're actually friends.
[02:22:02]  A horrible secret that Scott and I have is that we actually respect each other.
[02:22:05]  We all don't hate each other.
[02:22:06]  You two actually kind of like each other.
[02:22:08]  These are the kinds of secrets we'd like to expose.
[02:22:11]  It's nice to be with a member who knows what they're talking about.
[02:22:13]  You guys did agree to the civility, all right?
[02:22:15]  He owes my son $10 from a bet.
[02:22:18]  He is never paid.
[02:22:19]  He'll fork it over.
[02:22:21]  That's fighting words right there.
[02:22:22]  Glad I'm not in charge.
[02:22:24]  I'm thrilled to be on the show with him.
[02:22:26]  There are not shows like this, right?
[02:22:27]  Incentivizing that relationship.
[02:22:30]  Ceasefire, Friday nights on C-SPAN.
[02:22:40]  Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series.

=== C-SPAN Book Club Highlights New Releases (02:17) ===

[02:22:45]  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.
[02:23:00]  He joins our host, civic leader, best-selling author, and owner of the Baltimore Orioles, David Rubenstein.
[02:23:07]  I thought writing kids' books were a good way to broach certain subjects that might have been tough when you were 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.
[02:23:24]  So I just enjoyed the process.
[02:23:26]  Watch America's Book Club with Cal Ripken Jr. Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific.
[02:23:34]  Only on C-SPAN.
[02:23:44]  On this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb.
[02:23:48]  Seth Harp is a lawyer and an Iraq war veteran and an investigative writer and journalist.
[02:23:55]  His first book, The Fort Bragg Cartel, is about drug trafficking and murder in the Special Forces.
[02:24:02]  Near the end of his book, Harp writes, quote, between January 2017 and September 2022, a total of 15,293 active duty service members suffered drug overdoses, and 322 of those were fatal.
[02:24:20]  The Defense Department data, and we're still quoting, showed that Fort Bragg had far more overdoses than any other military base in both absolute and per capita terms.
[02:24:31]  Unquote.
[02:24:32]  Fort Bragg is located in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and is the largest populated Army base with close to 50,000 soldiers and is headquarters of the secret Delta Force.
[02:24:45]  A new interview with veteran journalist and author Seth Harp about his book, The Fort Bragg Cartel, Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces.
[02:24:54]  Book Notes Plus with our host Brian Lamp is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app.

=== Overdoses Plague Fort Bragg Soldiers (06:16) ===

[02:25:03]  In a divided media world, one place brings Americans together.
[02:25:07]  According to a new MAGIT research report, nearly 90 million Americans turn to C-SPAN, and they're almost perfectly balanced.
[02:25:15]  28% conservative, 27% liberal or progressive, 41% moderate.
[02:25:21]  Republicans watching Democrats, Democrats watching Republicans, moderates watching all sides.
[02:25:27]  Because C-SPAN viewers want the facts straight from the source.
[02:25:31]  No commentary, no agenda, just democracy.
[02:25:34]  Unfiltered every day on the C-SPAN networks.
[02:25:39]  Washington Journal continues.
[02:25:42]  Welcome back to Washington Journal.
[02:25:44]  Joining us now is Stephen Hawkins.
[02:25:46]  He is the Global Director of Research at the organization More in Common, and he's here to talk about a really interesting study into President Trump's GOP coalition and the reaction to the war in Iran.
[02:25:56]  Good morning, Stephen.
[02:25:57]  Good morning, Taylor.
[02:25:58]  Thanks for being here.
[02:25:58]  So first off, for people not familiar with More in Common, describe your organization, how it's funded, what type of work you do.
[02:26:05]  If you ask Americans today to describe the country in one word, they typically use the word divided.
[02:26:10]  We're all concerned about polarization in this country.
[02:26:13]  More in Common was founded in the United States in 2018 to try and understand better what's going on in the country in terms of people's psychology and values, why we're so divided, and what we can do about it.
[02:26:23]  We're now operating in seven countries around the world.
[02:26:26]  We have over 75 staff.
[02:26:27]  And the main thing that we do is we just talk to people in large scale to try and understand their perspective on the issues of our time and to then advise media, political parties, governments, philanthropy, and what they can do about it.
[02:26:39]  You recently finished up a major study specifically into President Trump's coalition, the MAGA movement, if you will, make America great again for people unfamiliar.
[02:26:49]  Why did you want to look at that in the first place?
[02:26:51]  This might be the most important population on earth right now.
[02:26:54]  What this group of people, President Trump supporters, will tolerate, will support, will enthusiastically stay behind will define what this presidency is about.
[02:27:04]  And so understanding what their fracture points are, what they're motivated by, why they support President Trump is an absolutely central question of our moment.
[02:27:12]  What's really interesting is you divide up the president's coalition into four different voter types.
[02:27:16]  I think we could put them up on screen.
[02:27:18]  You have what you call MAGA hardliners, anti-woke conservatives, mainline Republicans, and reluctant right.
[02:27:25]  Can you dive, kind of give a top line or two for each of them?
[02:27:28]  Sure.
[02:27:29]  The MAGA hardliners are kind of the prototypical Trump supporter that you might imagine from rallies.
[02:27:34]  These are people who really like President Trump.
[02:27:37]  They're enthusiastic about him.
[02:27:38]  They're fans of President Trump.
[02:27:40]  These are people who don't just believe that President Trump is a good leader.
[02:27:43]  They think he's the best leader the Republican Party has had in their lifetime.
[02:27:47]  They're also people who bring more of their identity into their politics and into the support for President Trump.
[02:27:52]  For instance, with the MAGA hardliners in particular, they will say that they think that God saved President Trump's life so that he can make America great again at high rates.
[02:28:00]  They bring their faith in their politics together.
[02:28:03]  They're older, they're white, on large, 89, 90%.
[02:28:08]  And then you have the anti-woke conservatives, and this group is also demographically similar.
[02:28:12]  They're older and they're more white, but they are more affluent, they're more educated, they keep their faith and their politics apart, and they see Trump as almost an instrument of opposition to block the progressive left, the woke agenda that they decry and dislike.
[02:28:27]  And they're politically engaged.
[02:28:29]  Then you have the mainline Republicans that you mentioned.
[02:28:31]  The mainline Republicans could also sort of be referred to as a default Republican.
[02:28:35]  These are people who aren't particularly politically engaged, but if you ask them, they're a Republican.
[02:28:40]  They support President Trump, but they're not following the news cycle day to day or maybe even week to week.
[02:28:45]  And then you have the reluctant right, and the reluctant right is probably the most consequential group in the coalition right now, not because they're the most engaged.
[02:28:52]  Many of them aren't following the news super closely, but because they have tepid support for President Trump.
[02:28:58]  Many of them voted for Trump in 2024 only because they thought he was the better option relative to Kamala Harris and because they were concerned about the economy and immigration.
[02:29:08]  Now the Republican, sir, I'm sorry, now the reluctant right are reconsidering some of them.
[02:29:13]  As many as 25, 30% of that group is starting to have hesitations around their support for President Trump.
[02:29:20]  So as the conversation about the midterms proceeds, it'll be the group to watch.
[02:29:23]  You talked about how this overall coalition you think is kind of an extremely important group to track in this moment.
[02:29:30]  Explain a bit more for people wondering where they may fall into those different categories that you just outlined, the value, at least from your organization's perspective, of grouping them.
[02:29:40]  Because people might say, hey, voters are not monoliths, voting groups are not monoliths.
[02:29:44]  So what value have you gained from understanding the coalition and breaking it down in that way?
[02:29:49]  Well, first of all, if you go to beyondmaga.us, you can actually take the typology quiz yourself and find out which of the four groups you belong to.
[02:29:56]  So if you're curious, it just takes a few minutes to do, and we're transparent about the questions that construct that typology.
[02:30:02]  The value of it is that too often in general, we think in terms of red and blue.
[02:30:08]  We think in terms of Democrat, Republican, Independent.
[02:30:11]  And what More In Common does is we work with social psychologists and political scientists who help us to see more granularity and frankly more humanity within these big populations so that we don't just work with a default stereotype or a caricature of the other side.
[02:30:26]  And through the process of this research, we didn't just survey people, we met them.
[02:30:30]  And we did focus groups with dozens of people as well as long-form, in-depth interviews with them.
[02:30:36]  And it taught all of our research team more than we expected and also opened up relationships that we didn't have before.
[02:30:43]  Because this data is so interesting, we've changed up our phone lines for this and we've divided them up in a different way for this conversation.
[02:30:50]  So for people listening at home, if you consider yourself to be a MAGA Trump voter, we want you to call 202-748-8000.
[02:30:59]  If you are a Trump voter but you don't consider yourself MAGA, we want you to call 202-748-8001.
[02:31:06]  If you are not in either of those camps, we still want to hear from you.
[02:31:09]  We want you to call 202-748-8002.
[02:31:12]  You could also text us here at C-SPAN at 202-748-8003.
[02:31:17]  We'd love to hear from the broader group.

=== Rush Limbaugh Criticizes War Rationale (15:18) ===

[02:31:19]  Now, let's talk about today is three weeks since the war against Iran was launched, and it's been striking to see specifically among President Trump's base opinions on this war and whether or not it aligns with what the president campaigned on.
[02:31:34]  How have you been gauging the response to that as it factors into all this research you've done?
[02:31:39]  We asked Trump voters how they would describe President Trump and we gave them a big long list of positive and negative words.
[02:31:46]  And the words that stand out the most are strong and leader.
[02:31:50]  And where his, on issues where President Trump has been most successful in maintaining enthusiasm from his base are on issues of foreign policy and on immigration.
[02:32:02]  So if you look at the intervention in Iran through that prism, it's a smart move on President Trump's behalf to take a decisive, strong leadership move in trying to topple a regime which quite uniformly Trump voters view not just as bad but as evil.
[02:32:20]  However, the Trump coalition does not want long, lengthy wars.
[02:32:24]  They do want strong economic performance.
[02:32:26]  They do not want boots on the ground.
[02:32:29]  And so what in the short term, a narrow intervention, could have been popular.
[02:32:33]  And in fact, it seems he lost no support whatsoever for his intervention in removing Nicolas Maduro from power in Venezuela.
[02:32:40]  But a sustained medium-term or even long-term engagement in Iran could prove very challenging for him to maintain his popularity through.
[02:32:49]  To that point, we've seen over the course of this week the first senior administration official resign in protest of this war.
[02:32:55]  His name was Joe Kent.
[02:32:56]  He was a top counterterrorism official.
[02:32:58]  We've also seen a lot of a spotlight on Vice President JD Vance because he's a military veteran himself.
[02:33:04]  He has been very outspoken in years past about his frustrations with prolonged conflicts in the Middle East.
[02:33:10]  He was at an event in Michigan earlier this week, and he was asked about the resignation of that counterterrorism official, Joe Kent, in protest of the Iran war.
[02:33:17]  Here's that exchange.
[02:33:19]  Joe Kent resigned from his post over his objection to the war in Iran.
[02:33:22]  He was among those Republicans who was pretty dedicated to Trump's agenda and the mega movement.
[02:33:27]  So how does his exit speak to the fracture of that coalition over the war?
[02:33:31]  And what can you say to those who deeply believe in the president's agenda but are really worried about the consequences of what the war in Iran holds?
[02:33:39]  Well, look, I mean, the president has said this, I've said this, nobody likes war, right?
[02:33:44]  And I guarantee you the president of the United States is not interested in getting us, you know, in the kind of long-term quagmires that we've seen in years past.
[02:33:53]  I know the president.
[02:33:54]  I know the way that he thinks about America's national security.
[02:33:56]  That is not a risk with this president at all.
[02:33:59]  What he has also said consistently for 10, 15 years, maybe even longer, is Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, and he's willing to take action, diplomatic, ideally, but military action if he has to to make sure that that doesn't happen.
[02:34:12]  That's all this is about.
[02:34:13]  We don't want the Iranians to have a nuclear weapon.
[02:34:16]  The president's been clear about this and that's what led to the president's decision of, what, about three weeks ago.
[02:34:22]  Now you asked about Joe Kent.
[02:34:24]  Now I know Joe Kent a little bit.
[02:34:25]  I like Joe Kent.
[02:34:26]  You heard the President of the United States say yesterday that he likes Joe Kent too.
[02:34:30]  But it's one thing to have a disagreement of opinion.
[02:34:33]  I know the president very well.
[02:34:34]  He welcomes differences of opinion.
[02:34:36]  He likes it when people express their views about what should happen.
[02:34:40]  He listens to everybody.
[02:34:41]  It's one of the great things I like about him is that whether you're the gardener at Mar-a-Lago or whether you're the Secretary of the State, the President cares about what you think about an issue.
[02:34:50]  He recognizes that everybody has smarts and everybody has wisdom.
[02:34:54]  That said, whatever your view is, when the President of the United States makes a decision, it's your job to help make that decision as effective and successful as possible.
[02:35:04]  And so the President said this yesterday, if you are on the team and you can't help implement the decisions of his administration, he has the right to make those decisions, then it's a good thing for you to resign.
[02:35:16]  And I think that's exactly right.
[02:35:18]  It's fine to disagree.
[02:35:20]  But once the president makes a decision, it's up to everybody who serves in his administration to make it as successful as possible.
[02:35:27]  That's how I do my job.
[02:35:28]  And I think that's how everybody in the administration should do their job too.
[02:35:34]  So Stephen, what did you make of the vice president's public defense of this war and his reaction to Kent's resignation?
[02:35:41]  What is the decision that the president made here?
[02:35:43]  That's what he's referencing here.
[02:35:44]  He made the decision.
[02:35:45]  We stand by the decision.
[02:35:46]  What's the decision?
[02:35:48]  In 2025, the United States acted with Israel to destroy using bunker-busting missiles, almost a totality of, if not all of, the Iranian nuclear development facilities and uranium enrichment facilities.
[02:36:05]  This was a different action.
[02:36:06]  This was not the targeting of the nuclear facilities in Iran.
[02:36:10]  This was the removal and killing of the head of state and many of his closest allies.
[02:36:17]  So what is the decision?
[02:36:18]  Is the decision that there's going to be regime change?
[02:36:21]  If that's the decision, then it won't be sufficient for us to bomb from afar.
[02:36:25]  There will very likely need to be ground troops that come in and help facilitate a change in government.
[02:36:31]  And that would be extremely costly, both politically, militarily.
[02:36:35]  We saw this week already a $200 billion request for additional funding from the Pentagon.
[02:36:41]  So if that's the decision, regime change, well, then we'll see if that's what something that JD Vance is willing to stand behind.
[02:36:46]  It won't be popular with the American people.
[02:36:48]  It won't be popular even with President Trump's base.
[02:36:51]  Among Republicans, less than 20% are in favor of ground troops.
[02:36:56]  So if the decision instead is just to bomb the country as a signal of the United States' opposition to this administration, well, that's already happened.
[02:37:04]  The question is what happens next?
[02:37:06]  Let's turn to some callers now.
[02:37:08]  We have Arthur calling in from here in Washington, D.C. on the all-other line.
[02:37:12]  As a reminder, we've divided up the phone lines for self-identified MAGA Trump voters, Trump voters who are non-MAGA, and all others.
[02:37:19]  Good morning, Arthur.
[02:37:20]  You're on with our guest.
[02:37:22]  Hey, good morning.
[02:37:23]  I just wanted to ask if you could speak to the Mufti.
[02:37:26]  I know it hasn't really been mentioned anywhere, and I'm reading a document that ties the regime in Iran to the Albana Mufti coalition that worked with Nazis, actually.
[02:37:42]  So I'm just wondering if you could speak to that, please.
[02:37:45]  Stephen, do you have anything on that?
[02:37:47]  I'm going to have to pass on that one, Taylor.
[02:37:48]  That's fair.
[02:37:49]  We could dive into that at a different time.
[02:37:50]  Let's go to Stan calling in from New York, who called in on the MAGA Trump voter line.
[02:37:56]  Good morning, Stan.
[02:37:57]  You're on with our guest.
[02:37:59]  Yeah.
[02:37:59]  Hey, how are you doing?
[02:38:00]  Can you hear me?
[02:38:01]  We can.
[02:38:02]  Good morning.
[02:38:03]  Good morning.
[02:38:05]  So, yeah, I truthfully agree with the war in Iran, if that's what you want to call it, a war.
[02:38:13]  If it has to be war, to me, it sounds like to me, it has to be war.
[02:38:18]  You know, Iran has been carrying on for a long, long time.
[02:38:21]  And I don't think, you know, you just can't let that go.
[02:38:25]  Just keep going and just do nothing.
[02:38:28]  You know, because they seem to be really extreme.
[02:38:33]  I've heard their ideas and their ideology.
[02:38:35]  They want to, you know, they feel the world should be Islamic.
[02:38:41]  And so, you know, and not only that, with their weapons and what they say they're doing with the nuclear weapons and everything like that.
[02:38:50]  I suppose a lot of people feel like, oh, well, why are we doing that?
[02:38:55]  We're way over here.
[02:38:56]  You know, we're not over there.
[02:38:57]  We should mind our business all like that.
[02:38:59]  But it is our business because eventually they will come up with the technology to find bombs to reach us.
[02:39:05]  Not to mention, a lot of them are here and they could start some mess here.
[02:39:09]  So we have to get involved with that.
[02:39:11]  You know, it's not only Israel.
[02:39:13]  A lot of people feel like, oh, well, we're doing it for Israel.
[02:39:16]  I don't think so.
[02:39:18]  So, yeah.
[02:39:20]  Thank you for that, Stan.
[02:39:21]  To build on that, Stephen, let's talk about the rationale for this current conflict, because even the president's daily public remarks sometimes shift the goalposts for why he initially decided to launch this, how he is justifying it continuing.
[02:39:35]  What has stood out to you in terms of how his supporters are reacting to that?
[02:39:39]  Are they aligned with Stan and saying, we believe this threat is there, or are you noticing some fracturing?
[02:39:45]  Well, it does depend on who you're speaking to.
[02:39:48]  And so to go back to the four groups, the MAGA hardliners from what we have been able to see so far, we did some preliminary analysis, but nothing we've published yet.
[02:39:57]  They're fully with them, and for the same reason that the gentleman Stan calling in just mentioned, which is that it's very easy to recognize that this regime isn't just ugly.
[02:40:07]  It isn't just an external sponsor of terror.
[02:40:10]  This is a regime which mistreats its women and restricts their freedoms in a way that almost no other country on earth does.
[02:40:16]  The IRGC, the military that works with the leadership in Iran, was responsible for the deaths of 45,000 of its own children that it sent to clear minefields in the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.
[02:40:29]  This is an evil regime to much of the Trump coalition, to much of the world.
[02:40:34]  And so that enthusiasm for the United States playing a role that it has historically in taking on enemies, taking on, frankly, evil regimes, is something which we see support for.
[02:40:46]  But it's the extent of the effort.
[02:40:48]  It's the commitment that we're making there which makes people nervous.
[02:40:51]  The anti-woke conservatives group, the one that's less religious, the group that's well-informed and supportive of Trump, but has a narrower agenda, they're concerned about where this could take us.
[02:41:01]  We spent over 20 years in Afghanistan.
[02:41:04]  A 20-year engagement with Iran would be hugely costly for the United States.
[02:41:08]  And then let's also talk about a potential consequence here.
[02:41:11]  There are already nine other countries that have been implicated in the region as a result of this war.
[02:41:16]  From Saudi Arabia to Bahrain to Kuwait to UAE to Iraq.
[02:41:20]  This is quickly expanding into a regional war, not to mention with Israel.
[02:41:24]  And so the anti-woke conservatives are concerned not only about how far this might go in terms of continuity, how much, how many this could extend forward into months or years, but how this might grow into a regional or even a global war.
[02:41:37]  I want to turn to one of the listeners who called in on the non-MAGA Trump voter line.
[02:41:43]  So this is somebody who voted for the president but does not consider themselves to be MAGA.
[02:41:47]  This is Rush calling in from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
[02:41:50]  Good morning, Rush.
[02:41:50]  You're on with our guest.
[02:41:52]  Yeah, good morning.
[02:41:53]  I'm writing things down as we go here.
[02:41:58]  I'm 74 years old, Navy veteran, U.S. steel retiree.
[02:42:02]  I've called in numerous times here.
[02:42:06]  Like I say, voted for Trump three times, but he's lost me here.
[02:42:12]  Number one, just recently, there's two recent things this past week or two.
[02:42:21]  The Joe Kent thing.
[02:42:23]  Now, I was okay for Trump to say, you know, well, yeah, he threw the word weak in.
[02:42:30]  He said, this guy's weak.
[02:42:33]  This guy served 11.
[02:42:34]  He was deployed 11 times as a green beret.
[02:42:37]  He's a gold star husband.
[02:42:39]  His wife got killed.
[02:42:41]  I'm sure you're aware of that in Syria, a suicide bomber.
[02:42:46]  He's not weak.
[02:42:48]  And then I won't get into President Trump's past on going into the military.
[02:42:55]  Let's drop that.
[02:42:56]  So Hague said, then recently, three or four days, three days ago, he's got the Japanese prime minister here, that lady.
[02:43:05]  One of the Japanese reporters asked him why he didn't let them or any other country know before we went in on this.
[02:43:15]  I still don't think it's a war.
[02:43:17]  We haven't had a war since World War II.
[02:43:19]  We haven't declared war on them, I don't think.
[02:43:21]  But at any rate, and Trump says, well, we didn't let anybody know.
[02:43:26]  We wanted to keep it top secret.
[02:43:28]  He said, did you let us know?
[02:43:30]  No, not us.
[02:43:32]  Did you let me know about Pearl Harbor?
[02:43:36]  And people were laughing and stuff.
[02:43:38]  I'm thinking, you know what?
[02:43:40]  At least, if I was that reporter, at least the Japanese, Hawaii wasn't a state yet.
[02:43:47]  I'm sure Trump probably wasn't even aware of that.
[02:43:50]  They hit a military base.
[02:43:53]  They didn't hit Los Angeles.
[02:43:56]  And my response would have been, why didn't you let us know before you hit us with Hiroshima and Nagasaki and wipe out zillions of civilians?
[02:44:08]  Now, here's a few other ones here.
[02:44:11]  Now, Israel...
[02:44:13]  Here, wait, Rush.
[02:44:14]  I actually, if you don't mind, I want to interrupt because you brought up Joe Kent, and I want to play a clip from a conversation he had with Tucker Carlson, obviously prominent conservative influencer, one of the more MAGA people figures who has broken with the president over this war, sharing many of the frustrations that you were just outlining.
[02:44:32]  Here's what Joe Kent said to Tucker Carlson after he resigned from his position.
[02:44:37]  You're saying that there was no intelligence that you saw with the highest level clearance, obviously, involved in this conversation, that showed an imminent threat from Iran to the United States.
[02:44:49]  No.
[02:44:50]  Unless we took certain actions, unless we came after them in a way that they thought threatened the regime, then we basically knew what they were going to do.
[02:44:57]  Well, right, of course.
[02:44:58]  Right, but like any country.
[02:44:59]  So if you attack any country, we know that they're going to have a reaction.
[02:45:02]  We face an imminent threat once we attack you.
[02:45:05]  Yeah, exactly.
[02:45:05]  But there was no intelligence that said, hey, on whatever day it was, March 1st, the Iranians are going to launch this big sneak attack.
[02:45:12]  They're going to do some kind of a 9-11 Pearl Harbor, et cetera.
[02:45:15]  They're going to attack one of our bases.
[02:45:17]  There was none of that intelligence.
[02:45:19]  Again, back to what we know about the Iranians.
[02:45:21]  They're very, very deliberate with the escalation ladder.
[02:45:24]  And again, they're only deliberate under President Trump's leadership because they knew and they took President Trump very, very seriously.
[02:45:31]  Stephen, let's talk both about what Mr. Kent just outlined and is alleging based on the rationale for this decision to go to war, but also what Rush was just telling us as a three-time Trump voter saying this kind of crosses a line for me and he's confused about the handling of it.
[02:45:46]  What are your takeaways from those two thoughts?
[02:45:50]  Well, Kent is correct on this position.
[02:45:55]  I mean, last year, the United States attacked the nuclear facilities in Iran specifically to address that nuclear threat.
[02:46:03]  That was handled then.
[02:46:05]  That's a very different effort than trying to change the government or decapitate the government in Iran.
[02:46:11]  It does look like Joe Kent has the evidence on his side there in terms of what the imminent threat is.
[02:46:18]  The president hasn't laid out what the imminent threat would have been to the United States or to Israel and what the imminence of that would have looked like in terms of missile attacks.
[02:46:27]  We saw then in 2025 during the Israel-Iran war that took place in June, that Israel was able to defend itself.
[02:46:34]  Almost every single missile that was shot at it from Iran was deflected.

=== Defining Clear Objectives For Iran (14:20) ===

[02:46:38]  And so the rationale simply can't be one of survival.
[02:46:42]  That can't be what it is.
[02:46:44]  That can't be the motivation that the president is trying to make to the American people about why we're in Iran.
[02:46:49]  It has to be something about the ideology of the Iranian regime or the treatment of the Iranian regime of its people.
[02:46:55]  But the imminence of the threat isn't, it's not a case he's even tried to make.
[02:47:00]  Our next caller is from the great state of Texas.
[02:47:02]  Robert called in on the self-identified MAGA Trump voter line.
[02:47:06]  Robert, good morning.
[02:47:07]  You're on with our guest.
[02:47:10]  Thank you for taking my call.
[02:47:12]  I feel I'm a very well-read individual with my favorite president being FDR.
[02:47:17]  And FDR made one of the most historic speeches on what is called Day of Infamy.
[02:47:25]  So today I want to talk about the Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, because everything he says is false.
[02:47:32]  He went on the network and said he compared January 6th to the eradication of the Pacific Fleet.
[02:47:40]  That was his assertion.
[02:47:42]  He was on CNBC and the hosts were actually rolling their eyes about him, making his financial assertions.
[02:47:50]  In New York 8, he got 168,000 votes in the district of 750,000 or about 25%.
[02:47:59]  He vehemently opposes Trump on everything, yet everyone in his party voted for Iran as responsible for terror.
[02:48:08]  So here's my question.
[02:48:10]  Do you think Hakeem Jeffries should resign in disgrace?
[02:48:15]  So Stephen, let's talk about more broadly to Robert's point, how the Democrats have been responding to this.
[02:48:20]  There were a few notable Democrats, I think of Ohio Congressman Greg Landsman, a prominent Jewish Democrat who spent a lot of time in the Middle East.
[02:48:27]  He initially came out sort of in support of this conflict, but just yesterday he released a statement saying, it's time to wrap it up.
[02:48:34]  I feel we've accomplished what we've accomplished.
[02:48:36]  What has stood out to you in the broader Democratic Party's messaging on this?
[02:48:40]  And is there a chance that you think they could appeal to any tier of the breakdown of Trump voters that you've done in your research?
[02:48:47]  I think so.
[02:48:48]  Especially if this war continues.
[02:48:50]  Now, yesterday, we're speaking on Saturday, on Friday, President Trump said that he's considering winding down this engagement, right?
[02:48:57]  What that looks like exactly, I don't know.
[02:48:59]  It won't look like a change in regime.
[02:49:01]  That seems like it's not currently really even on the table.
[02:49:05]  So, what it will look like is a massive destruction of much of Iran's military and political apparatus, as well as attacking additional missile and nuclear facilities.
[02:49:16]  It will look like much damage done to the Middle East and the United States leaving without much to show for the engagement.
[02:49:23]  I think that the Democratic Party will try to capitalize on that by showing that the president's priorities are not on the economy, which is where the reluctant right voters, which are the ones that Democrats will be looking to pull in their direction ahead of the 2026 midterms, his priorities aren't aligned with theirs.
[02:49:40]  The Trump administration, specifically figures like the Vice President, the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, they have made a point over the last week or two to try to make clear to people: we do not think this is going to be an endless war and then contradict what the president is saying.
[02:49:54]  We have a clip of Hegseth talking about that specifically and why he thinks this operation is different.
[02:50:00]  Hear it from me, one of hundreds of thousands who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, who watched previous foolish politicians like Bush, Obama, and Biden squander American credibility.
[02:50:14]  This is not those wars.
[02:50:18]  President Trump knows better.
[02:50:22]  Epic Fury is different.
[02:50:24]  It's laser-focused.
[02:50:25]  It's decisive.
[02:50:26]  Our objectives, given directly from our America first president, remain exactly what they were on day one.
[02:50:36]  These are not the media's objectives, not Iran's objectives, not new objectives, our objectives.
[02:50:45]  Unchanged, on target, and on plan.
[02:50:50]  Stephen, how do you think that message will resonate to the president's coalition, to his base?
[02:50:56]  Notice that he doesn't say what the objectives are.
[02:50:58]  The objectives have remained unchanged.
[02:51:00]  What are they?
[02:51:01]  There is still an Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran.
[02:51:03]  It's just moved from father to son.
[02:51:07]  I think the base, in terms of the MAGA hardliners that we identify, the 29%, as well as the 30% we refer to as the mainline Republicans, they will largely stay with the president, I suspect, through this, at least for another month, six weeks, two months potentially, because they are loyal to him, because they believe that he is genuinely motivated by a desire to help this country, not a desire to advance himself.
[02:51:35]  But the more conversation there is about troops on the ground, and there have been now 2,500 Marines deployed to the region this week, the more conversation there is about how this is changing, gas prices, how this is going to have an effect not just on the U.S. economy, but on the global economy, the harder it is going to be for the president to continue to maintain support for this war among his base.
[02:51:56]  Let's hear now from Darrell calling in from the great state of Nevada.
[02:52:00]  He phoned in on the line for all others, so not a self-identified MAGA Trump supporter or a non-MAGA Trump supporter.
[02:52:06]  Good morning, Darrell.
[02:52:08]  Good morning.
[02:52:09]  Thank you for taking my call.
[02:52:11]  My question for Mr. Hawking would be: why now?
[02:52:17]  I would like to know what the GOP coalition thinks about the question why now.
[02:52:22]  That is, the callers that have called in before that said that Iran was a terrorist country.
[02:52:29]  Yes, that's true.
[02:52:30]  We've been at war for 47 years.
[02:52:33]  Yes, that's true.
[02:52:34]  All of those things are true.
[02:52:36]  But as Mr. Hawking pointed out, it had earlier been pointed out that there was no imminent threat.
[02:52:42]  And so I would like to know what they think about that.
[02:52:47]  Because gasoline prices have gone up.
[02:52:49]  Independent truckers are going out of business.
[02:52:52]  And the other thing is this.
[02:52:54]  There's a right way to do things or a wrong way to do things.
[02:52:57]  If your house has termites, I can get rid of the termites in four hours with a gallon of gasoline in a match.
[02:53:04]  But that's not the way to do it.
[02:53:06]  So thank you very much for taking my thoughts.
[02:53:08]  Thanks so much.
[02:53:09]  Your thoughts?
[02:53:10]  I think there are two narratives here.
[02:53:11]  One is that the Iranian people very heroically were in the streets in large numbers getting killed by this regime for having the temerity to want to have some role in the governance of their own society.
[02:53:25]  And those protests were at a place of growing bloodshed and that that was the instigation for President Trump intervening at the time that he did.
[02:53:36]  The other narrative, and one that polling this week has shown that a slight majority of Americans also perceive, is that this was an effort to change the subject.
[02:53:45]  The primary subject that was leading headlines in major newspapers immediately prior to this engagement three weeks ago was the Epstein files, was President Trump's personal implications in what was a pedophile sex ring run by Jeffrey Epstein, and particularly things that happened in the 1980s.
[02:54:08]  Now, even as many as one in four Republicans believes that this might have been partly the decision to attack Iran might have been partly motivated by a desire to change the subject from that investigation, which continues to be discussed and which is, or the files are still being reviewed by Congress and by the public.
[02:54:26]  We will see if that continues to be a big part of the discussion and whether Democrats continue to push on the Epstein files as a way of damaging President Trump.
[02:54:39]  But those are the two lenses through which I think this moment can be understood.
[02:54:43]  Let's hear from Bob calling in from Ruskin, Florida.
[02:54:46]  He called in on the non-MAGA Trump voter line.
[02:54:50]  Good morning, Bob.
[02:54:52]  Hi, good morning.
[02:54:53]  Yeah, I was in the military 26 years.
[02:54:56]  I went in in 1979 and I saw the beginning of the Ayatollah.
[02:55:02]  Then I deployed to Baghdad, Iraq, and I fought against Saddam regime, and I saw the insurgents come afterwards.
[02:55:13]  You know, one, to say that Epstein and what he did has anything to do with this war is absurd.
[02:55:24]  Second of all, you know, does Mr. Hawkins have anything positive to talk about that America is doing to stop a nuclear bomb from spreading throughout the war by this Iran regime?
[02:55:40]  So, Stephen, let's build on that.
[02:55:42]  We've talked a lot about the rationale and how the president's messaging might be confusing even members of his own base.
[02:55:48]  Do you think to Bob's point there is a legitimate case there that might be resonating with some of the president's supporters?
[02:55:54]  Because we have seen some polling that shows, especially for the more MAGA-aligned voters, even though it It goes against what the president campaigned on, saying no more forever wars, no more conflicts overseas.
[02:56:04]  They're behind him on this right now.
[02:56:06]  Right.
[02:56:06]  And it isn't a forever war yet.
[02:56:08]  And so I think, and maybe it never will be.
[02:56:11]  The positive thing to say to respond to the caller is that this is a regime that doesn't have the legitimacy of its people, that has been an opponent of the rights of women, of freedom of speech, of freedom of religion.
[02:56:28]  For any patriotic American who believes that American values ought to be universal, that people ought to have not just a right to speak and to practice a religion of their own choosing, and that men and women ought to have the ability to live the lives they want, but that they should actually be able to have some say in the governance of your country.
[02:56:47]  This should be an enemy of the United States.
[02:56:49]  And so, insofar as President Trump has taken on the Iranian regime, he's taken on a worthy enemy.
[02:56:54]  So, that's a positive thing to say.
[02:56:56]  The question is whether that enemy will actually be defeated or whether we'll just morph into a version of the same ideology, effectively the same people preserving this regime with just the most recent layer of leadership decapitated.
[02:57:13]  We might not actually be able to uproot the Islamic regime.
[02:57:18]  And in fact, that looks to be the case in Iran.
[02:57:20]  And so, the question is just what is the objective that the president is pursuing here, and will he have the determination to see it through?
[02:57:28]  Let's hear from one more caller.
[02:57:29]  I want to bring up Candace from the Buckeye State, Ohio, calling in on the MAGA Trump voter line.
[02:57:34]  Candace, if you could only take about 30 seconds so we could have time for our guests to respond, what would you like to say?
[02:57:41]  Wow.
[02:57:43]  First of all, people that this imminent threat, I mean, people are really, do they really think that we should wait until Iran points a nuclear weapon at us?
[02:57:55]  I mean, the term imminent threat is so broad because this regime has been attacking us for almost 50 years.
[02:58:03]  And second, Trump, nobody seems to understand that Trump has got President Trump, has got over 100 reasons why this is happening now.
[02:58:14]  And if people think it's because of the Epstein files, which President Trump brought back to light, it's ridiculous.
[02:58:23]  There are so many reasons why this is happening.
[02:58:26]  For him to divulge strategies or that's telling, he might as well call Iran and tell them his secrets as to what's happening or what's going to happen.
[02:58:38]  So that's ridiculous, too.
[02:58:40]  I don't need to know what his reasons are.
[02:58:44]  I've followed President Trump for 40 years.
[02:58:48]  And I just, you can see from all of the past videos, he has been consistent with his feelings about Trump or about Iran.
[02:58:59]  Thank you so much, Candace.
[02:59:00]  I really appreciate that insight.
[02:59:02]  As a closing point, clearly she falls into that MAGA column that is behind this war right now.
[02:59:08]  What stands out to you in our last minute?
[02:59:10]  Let's talk about consistency in this president, which was the caller's claim.
[02:59:14]  This is a president who, just in January, two months ago, in his State of the Union, said that he had ended eight wars, said that it was we would be measured not just by the wars that we win, but most importantly, by the wars that we don't get into.
[02:59:29]  That was President Trump two months ago this year.
[02:59:32]  Let's remember, this is a president who sought the Nobel Peace Prize.
[02:59:36]  Let's remember, this is a president who is critical of the war in Iran, critical of forever wars in general.
[02:59:42]  In terms of consistency, we'll see if he's able to maintain that.
[02:59:45]  He's in a difficult position now between having to pull back from a war which is far from finished and persisting in one that will be very unpopular for him and might have significant economic damage.
[02:59:57]  The thing the president can do to allay concerns that the country has and that his base might have is to be precise about the objectives.
[03:00:04]  JD Vance, Pete Hegseth, they're both saying the same thing, which is that the president is consistent, the president has made himself clear and is unwavering.
[03:00:13]  What are the objectives?
[03:00:14]  Lastly, for you, the midterm elections are in November.
[03:00:17]  The president won't be on the ballot, but his team has said they're treating it as if he is.
[03:00:22]  Do you think this could have an impact for how Republicans in Congress fare in their re-election bids?
[03:00:27]  88% of the time since World War II, the president's party has lost some power in Congress during midterm elections.
[03:00:34]  14 out of 16 elections.
[03:00:35]  It's happened in this century only once.
[03:00:38]  It was after September 11th, George W. Bush's Republican Party was able to gain some seats.
[03:00:43]  So from a statistical standpoint, independent of the context, President Trump is likely with the Republican Party to lose seats in the House.
[03:00:51]  We'll see what happens in the Senate.
[03:00:54]  How badly this or positively this affects his popularity.