CSPAN - Washington Journal 03/22/2026
Aired: 2026-03-22
Duration: 03:00:59


=== Iran War and Political News (03:50) ===

[00:00:00]  Campaign 2026, the U.S.-Israeli military conflict with Iran and other political news of the week.
[00:00:06]  And then Michael Tomaski, editor of The New Republic, discusses the future of the Democratic Party, U.S.-Israeli combat operations against Iran, and more political news of the week.
[00:00:16]  Washington Journal is next.
[00:00:18]  Join the conversation.
[00:00:28]  Good morning.
[00:00:30]  It's Sunday, March 22nd, 2026.
[00:00:33]  We're now in the fourth week of America and Israel's war with Iran with no signs of de-escalation.
[00:00:39]  So this morning we want to check in with you on the basic question, do you support or oppose the war with Iran?
[00:00:46]  Our phone line for Democrats is 202-748-8000.
[00:00:50]  For Republicans, 202-748-8001.
[00:00:54]  And for Independents, 202-748-8002.
[00:00:58]  If you're current or former military and would like to weigh in, that number is 202-748-8003.
[00:01:06]  That's also the number where you can text us if you'd like to reach us that way.
[00:01:10]  Please be sure to include your name and where you're writing in from.
[00:01:13]  You can also find us on social media at facebook.com slash C-SPAN and on X at C-SPANWJ.
[00:01:21]  Now, there have been a number of developments in this conflict over the weekend, including news from our president.
[00:01:27]  President Trump gave Iran a 48-hour ultimatum to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face strikes on power plants.
[00:01:35]  Here's some reporting on that from Fox News showing that post on Truth Social.
[00:01:41]  And it says here that President Trump issued a 48-hour ultimatum to Iran on Saturday, warning that the U.S. would strike its power plants if the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened.
[00:01:53]  If Iran doesn't fully open without threat the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various power plants, starting with the biggest one first, Trump said in that post on Truth Social.
[00:02:10]  The president's threat represents a notable escalation in rhetoric as tensions surge over the strategically vital waterway.
[00:02:18]  Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a global choke point for oil and gas transport that supplies roughly one-fifth of the world's crude oil, has been largely limited since early March, shortly after the war with Iran began.
[00:02:34]  Now, there has also been action from Iran over the weekend in this war, including strikes within Israel itself.
[00:02:42]  And this is reporting from the Times of Israel about those strikes in particular.
[00:02:47]  Over 150 injured, 11 seriously in Iranian missile strikes on the southern cities of Arad and Demona.
[00:02:55]  Two children in serious condition after air defenses failed to intercept missile fire apparently aimed at a nuclear research facility near Demona.
[00:03:04]  Iran claims the salvo was retaliation for the U.S. strike on Natans.
[00:03:10]  Nearly 200 people were injured by the Iranian strikes in the southern cities of Demona and Arad on Saturday.
[00:03:17]  11 of them seriously, medics said, after Israeli air defenses failed to intercept at least two ballistic missiles.
[00:03:25]  Following the strikes, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Ayal Zamir, pledged to continue fighting Israel's enemies on, quote, all fronts amid the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran that began on February 28th.
[00:03:42]  The IDF later said the Air Force was conducting a wave of strikes in Tehran, targeting the Iranian regime's infrastructure.

=== Costs of the Ongoing Conflict (15:37) ===

[00:03:50]  Now there has of course been quite a bit of reaction to this ongoing conflict here in the United States, including from various political leaders, among them Senator Lindsey Graham.
[00:04:01]  Here's a story about that in the Daily Caller.
[00:04:03]  Lindsey Graham says he'll take the blame if the Iran operation fails.
[00:04:09]  He said this in an interview with former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, and he spoke about the effort against Iran, whether it was worth it, especially given its impact on the economy.
[00:04:19]  He made these comments last week.
[00:04:22]  Every dollar that goes into the gas tank is a dollar away from other things.
[00:04:26]  I'm the first person in my family to ever go to college.
[00:04:29]  Neither one of my parents finished high school.
[00:04:31]  When I was 21, my mom died.
[00:04:33]  When I was 22, my dad died.
[00:04:35]  We owned a liquor store, a bar, and a pool room, and we grew up in the back.
[00:04:40]  We were a happy family, but by no means wealthy.
[00:04:43]  I know what it's like to be needing all the money you can because the bills keep coming in no matter what.
[00:04:49]  So when my mom died, she was 17 years younger than my dad.
[00:04:53]  I thought, well, that shouldn't happen, but it did.
[00:04:56]  Okay, my dad's 60-something, and I've got a 13-year-old sister.
[00:05:00]  15 months later, he's dead.
[00:05:02]  And I got a 13-year-old sister.
[00:05:04]  My life turned upside down.
[00:05:05]  So how do you pay the bills?
[00:05:07]  How's she going to call it?
[00:05:08]  What are you going to do?
[00:05:09]  I understand that.
[00:05:11]  I understand that the world can change and it can be pulled out from you under a rug.
[00:05:16]  Why am I asking people to be patient and to pay a price now so they don't have to pay later?
[00:05:21]  Because I believe it.
[00:05:22]  It's not that I'm indifferent to what 20 cents a gallon means.
[00:05:25]  Do you think you're going to be successful?
[00:05:28]  You do.
[00:05:28]  Okay, but part B of the question is.
[00:05:31]  If we're not, blame me, because I deserve blame.
[00:05:35]  If we're not successful, you can blame me because nobody has advocated to take on this Iranian regime more forcefully than me.
[00:05:46]  They were referencing in that interview there some of the economic consequences of the ongoing conflict in Iran, but there have also been demands here in the United States.
[00:05:55]  The U.S. government is now asking, the Pentagon in particular, is asking for an additional $200 billion for the Iran war, and Democrats have reacted to this.
[00:06:06]  This is a story in gray media saying that the rising cost of the war has sparked debate on Capitol Hill as the Pentagon prepares to ask Congress for billions more to continue the fight.
[00:06:17]  In a news briefing Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the U.S. military leaders plan to request about $200 billion in additional funding for Operation Epic Fury.
[00:06:29]  Quote, it takes money to kill bad guys, Hegseth said.
[00:06:33]  So we're going back to Congress and folks there to ensure that we're properly funded for what's been done and what we may have to do in the future.
[00:06:41]  The request now sets up a political showdown as lawmakers weigh the growing cost of the war against the economic pressure at home, including higher gas prices.
[00:06:51]  Now, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was asked about that Pentagon request for $200 billion for Iran operations, and he gave this response last week.
[00:07:01]  And so it's our responsibility right now to end this reckless war of choice, to end the fact that billions of dollars have already been spent, perhaps up to $2 billion a day to drop bombs in the Middle East.
[00:07:17]  But these same Republicans here ripped Medicaid away from millions of people, including children and seniors.
[00:07:26]  They've stolen food from the mouths of hungry veterans by enacting a $186 billion cut to SNAP, and then at the same period of time gave a $75 billion slush fund to ICE.
[00:07:39]  That's their priority.
[00:07:41]  They gave massive tax breaks to their billionaire donors.
[00:07:44]  That's the Republican priority.
[00:07:46]  And now they're dropping bombs in the Middle East in a reckless war of choice, spending billions of dollars.
[00:07:52]  Here's what we should be doing: we should repeal the Medicaid cuts.
[00:07:57]  We should extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits.
[00:08:00]  We should refund the money that Donald Trump stole from the American people through his unconstitutional and unlawful tariffs as declared by the Supreme Court.
[00:08:10]  That's what we should be doing if we're talking about the expenditure of billions of dollars of money.
[00:08:17]  Make life better for everyday Americans.
[00:08:24]  Once again, our question is: do you support or oppose the Iran war?
[00:08:28]  We're going to start with Tushar in Dale City, California on our line for Democrats.
[00:08:33]  Good morning, Tushar.
[00:08:35]  Hi, my name is Deshaun Nabani Agram.
[00:08:39]  I support the war in Iran because I want to be president of the United States of America one day, and I'll do the same thing Donald Trump did.
[00:08:47]  I am a Democrat, but I feel definitely safer with the war in Iran.
[00:08:52]  I would say, even though I said I support the war in Iran, that I think that it does contribute to our debt in this country or deficit.
[00:09:05]  I think we have quite a big debt or deficit in this country.
[00:09:09]  That's a Democratic Party point of view right there that I think is viable because we're spending money away from this country when we owe money to different parts of the government, or we shouldn't be spending money in other countries this way.
[00:09:29]  Okay.
[00:09:31]  John is in Cathedral City, California, on our line for former and current military.
[00:09:36]  Good morning, John.
[00:09:38]  Good morning.
[00:09:39]  I'm in totally agreement with our mission in Iran right now.
[00:09:46]  And I think that Democrats should, and I'm a Democrat, I'm an independent-leaning Democrat.
[00:09:53]  I think the Democratic Party should concentrate on our mission in Iran right now and not conflate the domestic agenda that we should also pay attention to.
[00:10:08]  But I think we should back our president, back our troops, and get this people in Iran completely destroyed.
[00:10:18]  Thank you.
[00:10:20]  Next up is Tomothy in Larchmont, New York, and our line for independence.
[00:10:24]  Good morning.
[00:10:27]  Good morning, and thank you for taking my call.
[00:10:29]  I want to preface this call by saying I'm a recently retired 30-year veteran, New York City High School history teacher, master's degree in political science.
[00:10:38]  I'm going to speak quickly, but I've got several major points to make.
[00:10:41]  First of all, I'm against the war.
[00:10:43]  Now, first, second of all, the comparisons to Iraq and Vietnam.
[00:10:48]  Let me start with Vietnam.
[00:10:49]  I'll be as quickly as I can.
[00:10:51]  Everybody should look up something called the tooth-to-tail ratio.
[00:10:54]  The tooth is the soldier, the tail of the people in logistics and support.
[00:10:58]  It's one of the reasons we failed in Vietnam.
[00:11:00]  The tooth-to-tail ratio is eight to one, which means essentially for every soldier fighting, you had eight people in logistics and support.
[00:11:09]  Remember, Osama bin Laden says we can't beat you militarily, but you'll die the death of a thousand cuts.
[00:11:14]  So let's start with that.
[00:11:16]  Also, what did Ho Chi Minh say?
[00:11:19]  You can kill 10 of my men for every one I kill of yours.
[00:11:22]  Still, at those odds, you will lose, and I will win.
[00:11:24]  Also, tooth-to-tail ratio, helicopters, eight hours of maintenance for every one hour in flight.
[00:11:31]  The other syndrome was the tar baby syndrome.
[00:11:33]  When you can't get your hands on this, you can't get your hands off of it.
[00:11:37]  That's no exit strategy.
[00:11:38]  And I'll wrap it up with this: personality.
[00:11:41]  When Kennedy got killed, he inherited the Vietnam War.
[00:11:45]  And Lyndon Johnson, being the tough guy from Texas, was known for saying over and over he wasn't going to be the first president to lose a damn war.
[00:11:54]  And because of that, he followed his policy of escalation, and we all know where that got us.
[00:11:59]  I think the previous caller may have been a Vietnam veteran.
[00:12:02]  I understand the rationale for supporting this because it's insane.
[00:12:06]  So let me just follow up with saying, yeah, I'm totally against it for all of the reasons.
[00:12:11]  And as far as personality is concerned, compare Johnson's attitude as a commander-in-chief to what we have now.
[00:12:18]  This current president will put his ego and his legacy before he puts the soldiers, the American people, our economy.
[00:12:28]  And also, by the way, Iraq, $10 billion a month, 12 months a year for eight long years.
[00:12:35]  Those are Congressional Budget Office numbers, and that's like $2 trillion.
[00:12:39]  And you also consider Veterans Care.
[00:12:41]  All these guys are going to need Veterans Care.
[00:12:43]  I know I said a lot, but it was an educated, intelligent call.
[00:12:46]  None of this was my opinion.
[00:12:49]  And you guys can look all of that stuff.
[00:12:51]  We are doomed to fail unless we get out of there as soon as possible.
[00:12:54]  Thank you for calling for taking my call.
[00:12:57]  And I hope everybody was listening.
[00:13:00]  There has been quite a bit of discussion about the ongoing costs of this war.
[00:13:04]  And here's a story in The Guardian.
[00:13:06]  The war on Iran cost the U.S. $12.7 billion by day six.
[00:13:12]  Here's how it's been spent in charts.
[00:13:14]  Now the total is likely to have exceeded $18 billion in counting.
[00:13:19]  Where are America's war dollars going in a war that was never declared in the first place?
[00:13:25]  And so looking at some of these figures, by day six, CSIS, that's a Center for Strategic and International Studies, put the cumulative cost at $12.7 billion.
[00:13:36]  The White House has not provided a cost estimate of their own.
[00:13:39]  The Pentagon and CENTCOM, who were both approached for comment, both suggested that the Guardian contact the other agency.
[00:13:46]  Now, the opening hours of the war were dominated by some of the most expensive weapons in the American arsenal.
[00:13:51]  Those long-range missiles, ballistic missile interceptors, and radar systems were consumed at a pace that has already drawn down stockpiles.
[00:14:00]  The Pentagon has since transitioned to cheaper, shorter-range weapons, but the damage to the U.S. arsenal depth has been done.
[00:14:07]  Using the cost analysis, they analyzed where the dollars were going.
[00:14:12]  And this is certain examples of like the Tomahawk missiles that were being used, and each of those costing about $3.5 million.
[00:14:22]  And so that's just one example of how these costs are adding up.
[00:14:26]  Next up, let's hear from Jeff in Indianapolis on our line for Democrats.
[00:14:30]  Good morning, Jeff.
[00:14:34]  Good morning, Jeff.
[00:14:35]  Go ahead.
[00:14:38]  All right.
[00:14:38]  Well, let's hear from Steve, who is in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, on our line for Republicans.
[00:14:44]  Good morning, Steve.
[00:14:45]  Good morning.
[00:14:46]  Thank you for taking my call this morning.
[00:14:49]  I've been a lifelong Republican.
[00:14:51]  I'm in my 60s, and I oppose this war.
[00:14:55]  I oppose it because, along with many of the other conflicts we've gotten into, it appears we do not have an ability to exit our situations.
[00:15:07]  And in this case, the case for the war has not been made.
[00:15:12]  The support for the war is limited.
[00:15:15]  And while I believe in American defense and I support our troops, I do not believe they should have been put in harm's way by the whim of a president.
[00:15:27]  And that's my position.
[00:15:29]  Steve, can you hold on for a moment?
[00:15:30]  I'd like to read you some polling from Politico and get your thoughts on it.
[00:15:35]  And this was a question about the share of Americans split by whether they self-identify as MAGA or non-MAGA Republicans who support or oppose the joint U.S.-Israel military strikes on Iran, the killing of Iran's supreme leader, and the targeting of Iranian military, nuclear, and government sites.
[00:15:54]  So among the Republicans who identify as MAGA Republicans, 81% support the conflict in Iran, just 7% oppose.
[00:16:05]  Among Republicans who do not identify as MAGA, 61%, still a majority, support the war in Iran and the strikes in Iran.
[00:16:14]  19% oppose.
[00:16:16]  But overall, Republicans, but overall in general, this is not just Republicans, 43% support the war in Iran compared to 33% who oppose.
[00:16:30]  And I wonder what you think of those numbers.
[00:16:35]  MAGA, in my view, is a cult.
[00:16:38]  I would be sort of a moderate traditional Republican in my views.
[00:16:42]  And as a result, I believe if President Trump says it, most of MAGA follows it.
[00:16:50]  I am somewhat surprised given the platform that the president ran on of keeping us out of foreign entanglements, which MAGA supported, that so many of them flipped so quickly.
[00:17:03]  But again, this is the cult.
[00:17:05]  This is a cult of the presidency at this point.
[00:17:08]  And that is a problem.
[00:17:10]  All right.
[00:17:11]  Next up is Sophia in Manhattan, New York, on our line for independence.
[00:17:14]  Good morning, Sophia.
[00:17:17]  Can you turn down the volume on your TV, Sophia, and then go ahead with your comment?
[00:17:21]  But again, this is the cult.
[00:17:22]  This is a cult of the president.
[00:17:24]  All right.
[00:17:24]  We're going to hear from Leslie in Scranton, Pennsylvania, on our line for former and current military.
[00:17:29]  Good morning, Leslie.
[00:17:34]  Are you talking to me?
[00:17:35]  Yes, go ahead, Leslie.
[00:17:37]  Hello.
[00:17:38]  Yeah, you know what?
[00:17:40]  You know, everybody calls us MAGA, but more or less, let's go on and bypass that.
[00:17:47]  We've got to support our troops.
[00:17:49]  We've got to support our president no matter what.
[00:17:52]  We definitely got to support our president right now.
[00:17:56]  And we've got to support our troops.
[00:17:58]  Could you imagine if a nuclear bomb hit the United States of America?
[00:18:03]  I think he's doing the right thing.
[00:18:04]  Even though he said he would never get us in wars, but I honestly think he's doing the right thing right now.
[00:18:10]  So Leslie, if you don't mind, I'll let you finish.
[00:18:13]  But I want to read a little bit more of that analysis from that Politico polling that I was just referencing with our previous caller.
[00:18:20]  It says that a majority of both MAGA and non-MAGA Trump voters, 54% say that they back the strikes because they trust Trump to do the right thing, which is exactly what you were saying, Leslie.
[00:18:36]  I was just going to highlight that there's polling to support that many of your peers think the same thing.
[00:18:42]  So please go ahead.
[00:18:43]  Yeah, but I don't believe in that MAGA, M-A-G-A.
[00:18:47]  I don't believe in that.
[00:18:49]  I don't like being categorized like that.
[00:18:52]  You know, I am a very conservative, moderate big Republican, and I'm a moderate Independent as well.
[00:19:00]  But I believe in our president, and we've got to back our president on this, because you know what?
[00:19:05]  If a nuclear bomb hit the United States of America, how would we like that?
[00:19:10]  We wouldn't even be alive right now.
[00:19:12]  None of us.
[00:19:14]  None of us.
[00:19:15]  He's doing the right thing.
[00:19:17]  Leslie, of what you've heard from the president, what do you think is the reason that we're at war in Iran?
[00:19:24]  I haven't even, well, first of all, I'm military, okay?

=== Intelligence Assessment on Threats (14:57) ===

[00:19:28]  So I can understand why he's not giving you the objectives.
[00:19:31]  He's not giving the news media any objectives.
[00:19:34]  Because if a president goes out on the news media and says, well, these are my objectives for this war, well, guess what?
[00:19:43]  The enemy would know it, okay?
[00:19:45]  And that's the reason why they're not doing it.
[00:19:47]  You know, you might be out there all the time on the news media, and everybody's thinking, well, he's going to say something, but guess what?
[00:19:58]  There's no way.
[00:20:00]  There's no way.
[00:20:01]  He's got Marco Rubio behind him.
[00:20:06]  Okay.
[00:20:07]  Next up is Kylene in Butte, Montana on our line for Democrats.
[00:20:11]  Good morning, Kylene.
[00:20:13]  Hi.
[00:20:14]  I'm opposed to the war.
[00:20:16]  What we've done is given them an excuse to bomb everything.
[00:20:21]  The possibility that maybe someday, somehow, they would have a nuclear weapon isn't there.
[00:20:28]  You don't need a nuclear weapon anymore.
[00:20:31]  Look at all you can do with the drones.
[00:20:34]  They're cheap.
[00:20:35]  We're spending millions of dollars on our equipment to take out things that only cost a few thousand dollars.
[00:20:42]  You look at, yeah, no one wants a terrorist.
[00:20:45]  No one wants any of that.
[00:20:47]  Take them out, of course, and no one's opposed to the troops.
[00:20:51]  We're putting ourselves in essentially an impossible situation.
[00:20:56]  They didn't need a nuclear bomb.
[00:20:57]  They've taken the whole world down and made a mess of the whole petroleum industry.
[00:21:03]  So I don't see why we've gotten in this mess.
[00:21:06]  I don't understand.
[00:21:07]  I guess the president didn't listen to anyone.
[00:21:11]  But look at Gaza.
[00:21:13]  Nothing's been resolved there at all.
[00:21:17]  Hamas is still armed.
[00:21:19]  People are dying.
[00:21:21]  The infrastructure is destroyed.
[00:21:24]  So you talk about doing the same kind of thing to Venezuela.
[00:21:29]  Not Venezuela, excuse me, Iran.
[00:21:33]  Iran is 4,000 times bigger than Gaza.
[00:21:38]  They have 90 million people.
[00:21:41]  So no one wants refugees and on.
[00:21:45]  Anyway, this war does not make any sense at all.
[00:21:49]  Thank you.
[00:21:50]  Kylene was referencing the argument from the Trump administration that Iran was a nuclear threat leading up to this war.
[00:21:58]  And during a Senate hearing on worldwide threats, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had this exchange with Georgia Democratic Senator John Osoff about whether Iran's nuclear program was indeed an imminent threat.
[00:22:11]  This was from last week.
[00:22:13]  Was it the assessment of the intelligence community that there was a, quote, imminent nuclear threat posed by the Iranian regime?
[00:22:19]  Yes or no?
[00:22:20]  Senator, the only person who can determine what is and is not an imminent threat is the president.
[00:22:25]  False.
[00:22:27]  This is the worldwide threats hearing where you present to Congress national intelligence, timely, objective, and independent of political considerations.
[00:22:35]  You've stated today that the intelligence community's assessment is that Iran's nuclear enrichment program was obliterated and that, quote, there had been no efforts since then to try to rebuild their enrichment capability.
[00:22:47]  Was it the intelligence community's assessment that, nevertheless, despite this obliteration, there was a, quote, imminent nuclear threat posed by the Iranian regime?
[00:22:57]  Yes or no?
[00:22:58]  It is not the intelligence community's responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat.
[00:23:04]  That is up to the president.
[00:23:08]  It is precisely your responsibility to determine what constitutes a threat to the United States.
[00:23:14]  This is the worldwide threats hearing, where, as you noted in your opening testimony, quote, you represent the IC's assessment of threats.
[00:23:26]  You are here to represent the IC's assessment of threats.
[00:23:31]  That's a quote from your own opening statement.
[00:23:34]  And so, my question is: as you're here to present the IC's assessment of threats, was it the assessment of the intelligence community that, as the White House claimed on March 1st, there was a, quote, imminent nuclear threat posed by the Iranian regime?
[00:23:51]  Yes or no?
[00:23:52]  Once again, Senator, the intelligence community has provided the inputs that make up this annual threat assessment.
[00:24:00]  You want to answer the question of the imminent threat that the president has to make that determination based on a collection and volume intelligence that he is provided with.
[00:24:10]  You're here to be timely, objective, and independent of political considerations.
[00:24:15]  Exactly what I'm doing.
[00:24:16]  No, you're evading a question because to provide a candid response to the committee would contradict a statement from the White House.
[00:24:27]  Once again, our question is, do you support or oppose the war in Iran?
[00:24:32]  A response we received via text from Kristen in Portland, Maine.
[00:24:36]  Overall, I oppose.
[00:24:38]  No one can argue that our military can obliterate Iran, but the horrors of the killing of 150 schoolgirls will stoke anti-American sentiment for generations to come.
[00:24:49]  We look like an overreactive, aggressive bully.
[00:24:54]  Dwayne Robertson says on X, I oppose the war with Iran and our continued military action in the Middle East.
[00:25:01]  A major reason I voted for Trump was to end these wars and not start new ones.
[00:25:06]  Looks like he lied, and now U.S. military members are dead.
[00:25:10]  This isn't even a war for our protection.
[00:25:13]  It's all for Israel.
[00:25:15]  Back to your calls.
[00:25:16]  Jeffrey is in Greensboro, North Carolina on our line for independence.
[00:25:20]  Good morning, Jeffrey.
[00:25:22]  Good morning.
[00:25:23]  Thank you for taking the call.
[00:25:24]  How are you this morning?
[00:25:25]  I'm all right.
[00:25:26]  Thanks.
[00:25:26]  What's your comment?
[00:25:28]  Yes, the comment is just like all over the place, truly and honestly.
[00:25:32]  Going back to the video that you just spoke upon about the hearing, actually, I saw a little bit of that.
[00:25:40]  What is very disturbing is, one, it should have gone through the progressional branches of government.
[00:25:48]  Congress should have been able to oversee, hear the president's argument about it.
[00:25:53]  Absolutely, America is not fooled, knowing that Israel had a tremendous play in this in retrospect of never wanting to see Iran with any type of, how can I say, independence on its own, or more importantly, always just a threat to Israel.
[00:26:10]  And our connection with Israel is so powerful and so strong that that's the obviously connection.
[00:26:16]  Then you guys, the president, you know, reiterating, taking over another country, Cuba, and as well as Venezuela.
[00:26:23]  It's so much going on.
[00:26:25]  And then the suffering of our own people in America, the United States, with the over extreme prices that are going up from gas to groceries, everything is just now just thrown out of whack.
[00:26:38]  But more importantly, it's a distraction.
[00:26:41]  It's a distraction where they never actually getting off topic a little bit with the Jeffrey Epstein situation.
[00:26:47]  Every time it got so much more political with that, something extreme will happen.
[00:26:51]  Venezuela happened.
[00:26:52]  Now this war happened.
[00:26:54]  It's just a lot that this man has no unchecked situation and he's calling the shots.
[00:27:01]  Like just this one president can just say, this is what's going to be done.
[00:27:05]  And everybody behind it is falling into place and nothing is getting resolved.
[00:27:09]  What's getting resolved?
[00:27:10]  It's just adding more of financial destructions with people here in America.
[00:27:16]  And then the point of it is you're finding resources in the billions of dollars, but you can't find it for the simplest things here for education, homelessness, housing, and the problems people on a day-to-day basis that have to struggle in America.
[00:27:32]  Make sense of this.
[00:27:33]  He's wrong every way about it.
[00:27:35]  Thank you for taking the call.
[00:27:37]  Betty is in Jackson, Tennessee, on our line for Republicans.
[00:27:40]  Good morning, Betty.
[00:27:42]  Well, I've always considered myself a Republican, but I just want to say something to all the military people out there.
[00:27:53]  My husband died of Agent Orange in Vietnam.
[00:27:58]  My one and only granddaughter died in Iraq.
[00:28:02]  I have two nephews on their way now, and the Marines headed to Iran.
[00:28:11]  The president made the statement one time that if you're captured or killed, you were losers.
[00:28:19]  This is what this president and this political party think of our military.
[00:28:29]  How many, how many more of our children have to die before it ends?
[00:28:40]  This president, I voted for him the first time, but I didn't even vote the last time for the simple reason is I thought, surely to goodness that people understood what he was, but apparently they don't.
[00:28:54]  He doesn't care anything about us.
[00:28:57]  If they drop a nuclear bomb on us tomorrow, he'd just be in the bunker saying, oh, well, you know, they were a bunch of losers.
[00:29:04]  They should have hid too.
[00:29:06]  That's all I got to say.
[00:29:08]  Very sorry for your loss, Betty, but thank you for sharing.
[00:29:12]  Betty was referencing the movement of troops to the region as the conflict continues.
[00:29:17]  And here's news, reporting on that from CBS News saying the Trump administration is making heavy preparations for potential use of ground troops in Iran.
[00:29:28]  Pentagon officials have made detailed preparations for deploying U.S. ground forces into Iran.
[00:29:34]  Multiple sources briefed on the discussions, told CBS News.
[00:29:38]  Senior military commanders have submitted specific requests aimed at preparing for such an operation as President Trump weighs moves in the U.S.-Israeli-led conflict with Iran.
[00:29:49]  Sources said Mr. Trump has been deliberating whether to position ground forces in the region.
[00:29:55]  Sources on the condition of anonymity because said on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
[00:30:02]  It was unclear what circumstances he would authorize the use of troops on the ground.
[00:30:09]  No, I'm not putting troops anywhere.
[00:30:11]  He told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday when asked about ground troops, but quickly added, if I were, I certainly wouldn't tell you.
[00:30:20]  Dennis is in Williamsport, Pennsylvania on our line for Democrats.
[00:30:24]  Good morning, Dennis.
[00:30:26]  Good morning.
[00:30:26]  Thanks for taking my call.
[00:30:30]  We keep mentioning oil and gas through the Straits of Hormos.
[00:30:37]  People, you better realize a lot of the ingredients for fertilizer come through that strait.
[00:30:41]  And right now there's a severe fertilizer storage in this country, and the price is skyrocketing.
[00:30:48]  You already had farms that were in serious trouble before all this started.
[00:30:55]  Also, we're borrowing $50 billion a week.
[00:30:59]  Now they want to put $200 billion more on it.
[00:31:05]  And If the Congress okays this $200 billion, it should be paid for by raising taxes on the rich.
[00:31:16]  The rich have gotten so much richer.
[00:31:20]  The top 10 billionaires, each wealth grew by an average of $70 billion last year.
[00:31:29]  And these are people that can't afford to pay another nickel in taxes.
[00:31:35]  I haven't been calling into this show on a regular basis because I just got so disgusted, I couldn't believe that the American people would put a bumbling fool like Trump into office again.
[00:31:48]  Have a nice day.
[00:31:49]  Thank you.
[00:31:50]  Bye.
[00:31:50]  Dennis referenced fertilizer and its movements through the Strait of Hormuz.
[00:31:55]  And there was a story about this on NPR.
[00:31:59]  It says, how the Iran war threatens global food supply.
[00:32:03]  The story says, about a third of all fertilizer shipped globally goes through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passage between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.
[00:32:13]  Now shipping traffic has been reduced to a trickle because of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, and the prices of goods like oil, natural gas, and fertilizer have been rising.
[00:32:24]  Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Iran are big global producers of fertilizer, and they export the raw ingredients other countries use to make their own fertilizers like natural gas and minerals.
[00:32:40]  Let's hear from Greg in Berea, Ohio on our line for current and former military.
[00:32:44]  Good morning, Greg.
[00:32:46]  Iran is not a threat, was not a threat, and does not pose a threat to our national sovereignty.
[00:32:54]  The President of the United States lacks discernment.
[00:32:58]  People on the show keep calling us saying, oh, if they have a nuclear weapon, they're going to destroy us.
[00:33:05]  I got news for you.
[00:33:07]  The Iranians don't have the military capacity to deliver a nuclear weapon.
[00:33:12]  What they're going to deliver it through Amazon or on a camel.
[00:33:16]  And the president is constantly flip-flopping and contradicting himself in regards to the objective of this mission.
[00:33:26]  And this is what we're dealing with, America.
[00:33:29]  Mr. Mullen was a decorated Marine who was wounded in combat.
[00:33:36]  He died.
[00:33:37]  Your president put out yesterday that he's glad he's dead.
[00:33:42]  What kind of person does that?
[00:33:45]  He is a disgusting human being.
[00:33:49]  And you, MAGA, you're nothing but a cult.
[00:33:53]  Have a nice day, America.
[00:33:56]  Greg was referencing the death of Robert S. Mueller III.
[00:34:00]  Here's his obituary from the New York Times.
[00:34:03]  He rebuilt the FBI and led the Trump inquiry.
[00:34:06]  He imposed the most significant overhaul of the FBI in its history.
[00:34:11]  Later, after concluding that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election, he became a target of the president's anger.
[00:34:20]  That is former FBI Director Robert Mueller, who died this weekend at the age of 81.

=== Former FBI Director Robert Mueller Dies (14:43) ===

[00:34:25]  Let's hear from Bill in Gross Beck, Texas on our line for independence on the question of whether you support or oppose the war in Iran.
[00:34:34]  Good morning, Bill.
[00:34:36]  Oh, yeah.
[00:34:38]  How are you doing?
[00:34:39]  I totally support it.
[00:34:42]  I think Donald Trump's probably in the top five presidents of all time.
[00:34:48]  Democrat presidents have come out and said that Iran was a threat.
[00:34:52]  For the last 47 years, they've been killing Americans, kidnapping Americans.
[00:34:57]  They've been a threat all the time.
[00:34:58]  I'll tell you somebody else that here not too long ago said that Iran was a threat and the number one threat, and that was Kamala Harris.
[00:35:09]  And you can pull it up.
[00:35:11]  She did an interview with Brett Baer, and it's all over YouTube.
[00:35:16]  It's all over YouTube.
[00:35:17]  But the liberal media don't want to tell you about it.
[00:35:21]  Kamala Harris sat right there in front of Brett Baer and said that Iran was the number one threat.
[00:35:27]  He asked her a direct question and she answered it.
[00:35:30]  And there's a lot of Democrats that say the same thing, but they're just jealous that Donald Trump had the courage to do something about it.
[00:35:41]  I mean, other presidents, Obama and them, didn't have the guts or the courage to do something about it.
[00:35:49]  Okay.
[00:35:51]  I was looking that up, but there's been multiple references to that comment that you made, that point that you made about Kamala Harris saying that in a Brett Baer interview in the past.
[00:36:02]  I want to go to some comments we received via text.
[00:36:06]  This is from Kevin in Connecticut.
[00:36:08]  I oppose this war that Israel and Trump started.
[00:36:12]  Trump and Netanyahu broke the Middle East.
[00:36:14]  Now Trump and Netanyahu want NATO to fix the Middle East mess.
[00:36:18]  Trump said we won and he's winding down the war, but he still wants $200 billion.
[00:36:25]  Now, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made statements denying that Israel dragged the United States into a conflict with Iran.
[00:36:33]  Here are some of those comments.
[00:36:35]  I want to close these opening remarks with one other fake news, and that is that Israel somehow dragged the U.S. into a conflict with Iran.
[00:36:44]  Does anyone really think that someone can tell President Trump what to do?
[00:36:50]  Come on.
[00:36:51]  President Trump always makes his decisions on what he thinks is good for America, and may I add, I think what is also good for future generations.
[00:37:01]  In this case, those interests are absolutely clear, and so is the clarity of our achievements.
[00:37:08]  Together, in close coordination with President Trump, a close coordination between America and Israel, our militaries, our intelligence services, we're achieving goals in lightning speed.
[00:37:22]  But I want to say another word.
[00:37:24]  It's been said that for 40 years, I've been saying that Iran is a danger to Israel and a danger to the world.
[00:37:34]  That is true.
[00:37:35]  You know who else said that?
[00:37:38]  President Trump.
[00:37:39]  47 years ago, when the Iranian thugs took over the American embassy, he said how dangerous this regime is.
[00:37:49]  In his first term in office, he didn't need any convincing.
[00:37:53]  He said the Iranian nuclear deal was the worst deal that he'd ever seen, and he walked out of it.
[00:37:59]  Right before his second term, before he was re-elected, I went to see him in Mar-a-Lago.
[00:38:05]  The first thing he said to me was, Bibi, we've got to make sure that Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons.
[00:38:11]  He said that to me.
[00:38:13]  I didn't say it to him.
[00:38:15]  He didn't need any convincing there either.
[00:38:17]  Now, why did he say that?
[00:38:19]  Because for more than four decades, this regime, as I said in the beginning of my remarks, is chanting, death to Israel, death to America.
[00:38:28]  But they say Israel is only the small Satan standing in their way.
[00:38:32]  The great Satan is the United States of America.
[00:38:36]  And these ideological fanatics, these lunatics, define their zoned.
[00:38:41]  Their reason for being is wiping out Western civilization and America that leads it.
[00:38:48]  Again, our question is whether you support or oppose the war with Iran.
[00:38:53]  Another comment that we received via X says, oppose.
[00:38:57]  We should never invade a country unless attacked first.
[00:39:02]  Next up is Bob in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on our line for Republicans.
[00:39:06]  Good morning, Bob.
[00:39:08]  Good morning.
[00:39:10]  You there?
[00:39:11]  Yes.
[00:39:11]  Do you support or oppose the war with Iran?
[00:39:15]  I support the war.
[00:39:17]  This is mega bob here for all the listeners out there.
[00:39:21]  That guy that called before, comparing Iran to Vietnam is lazy history.
[00:39:27]  Vietnam was a jungle insurgency with endless supply lines from China, USSR, zero conventional air naval threats.
[00:39:36]  Iran is a desert plateau nation with conventional military, no great power backers like that, and the U.S. already has a total air naval supremacy plus precision munitions that didn't exist in 1965.
[00:39:54]  We could degrade their capabilities in weeks without too many boots on the ground for decades.
[00:40:00]  Doomed to fail is COPE.
[00:40:03]  Show me the quagmire math.
[00:40:06]  Geography.
[00:40:07]  Iran, open terrain, vulnerable infrastructure choke points like Hermuz was already which we will dominate.
[00:40:16]  Vietnam was triple canopy jungle, perfect for hit and run.
[00:40:22]  Today, tech gap.
[00:40:23]  Today's U.S. drones, stealth, hypersonic, satellite intel versus 1960s conscript army.
[00:40:31]  Iran's air defense is Swiss cheese against us.
[00:40:36]  No endless occupation required.
[00:40:39]  The goal isn't turning Tehran into a democracy.
[00:40:43]  It's smashing nuclear sites, smashing missile factories, and IRG command in a finite campaign.
[00:40:52]  Vietnam, no such off-ramp.
[00:40:56]  Afghanistan lasted 20 years because we stayed.
[00:41:00]  That's politics, not capability.
[00:41:04]  That's all.
[00:41:05]  Carmen is in Pompano Beach, Florida on our line for Democrats.
[00:41:09]  Good morning, Carmen.
[00:41:11]  Hi, how are you doing?
[00:41:12]  Yeah, so I'm glad you took my call.
[00:41:14]  I'm a Democrat, but I'm a common sense Democrat.
[00:41:18]  I'm not a liberal.
[00:41:19]  I'm not a progressive.
[00:41:21]  I don't really care what the word MAGA is.
[00:41:24]  I do have an issue with Republicans.
[00:41:26]  If you look at the past, a lot of Republican presidents are always under these wars.
[00:41:31]  The reason I oppose it is because of money.
[00:41:33]  You know, follow the money.
[00:41:35]  That was one of the things I've always said when Trump got elected.
[00:41:39]  Forget everything that comes out of that man's mouth and follow the money.
[00:41:44]  And you're going to see where the logic is.
[00:41:46]  When you follow the money, you see who's going to make money off this war?
[00:41:51]  Who's going to benefit?
[00:41:52]  And I heard some previous callers.
[00:41:54]  Are billionaires going to put anything of their big tax break towards this war?
[00:41:58]  Nope.
[00:41:59]  You will not see that cut.
[00:42:01]  You will see them make even more money.
[00:42:04]  I feel sorry for the average person on Iran.
[00:42:09]  They're the ones who are going to suffer.
[00:42:10]  Look at Hamas.
[00:42:11]  How many children and women and men that can't fight in wars died?
[00:42:16]  You know, that's who gets hurting these things.
[00:42:19]  And it's all one big power grab coming out of Israel.
[00:42:24]  And I'm a supporter of Israel, by the way, coming out of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar.
[00:42:30]  They're all getting on this big bandwagon of billionaires, and they're controlling us like we're like little robots, and we're supposed to fight for them now.
[00:42:39]  So I oppose the war because my granddaughter is going in August.
[00:42:43]  And if she was fighting for her freedom, I would say, go get them, girl.
[00:42:48]  I am so proud of you.
[00:42:49]  But if she's fighting for a billionaire to make more money, no way I want to be a part of this.
[00:42:55]  That's a call.
[00:42:57]  John is in Florida on our line for independence.
[00:42:59]  Good morning, John.
[00:43:02]  Good morning.
[00:43:03]  Yeah, I initially didn't want to go into any war, military action, whatever you want to call this.
[00:43:10]  But now that we're in it, you've got to support it, especially with Iran shooting that ballistic missile into, I think it was Abu Garcia.
[00:43:20]  That was over 4,000 kilometers, so I think Europe should have, their eyebrows should have been raised when that happened a couple of days ago, because then now Iran has got ballistic missiles that can hit anywhere in Europe.
[00:43:32]  So they lied and said they only had ballistic missiles that can go about 2,000 kilometers.
[00:43:36]  And now we know they have ballistic missiles that can go 4,000 kilometers.
[00:43:39]  So obviously Europe better get involved a little quicker than they want to be.
[00:43:45]  As far as the money being spent, I didn't hear any Democrat and most people say anything about the $250 billion we've given you to Ukraine.
[00:43:56]  I never heard a peep about it.
[00:43:58]  But when it comes to maybe protecting our troops and our soldiers and what they need, then I've got to hear all about this money.
[00:44:04]  I don't want to really hear about the money.
[00:44:06]  Do I want to spend them?
[00:44:06]  I didn't want to spend the money in Ukraine.
[00:44:08]  I don't want to spend the money here.
[00:44:10]  I mean, I've got money that is locked up in 401ks.
[00:44:13]  I've money markets.
[00:44:14]  I mean, everyone's taking a hit in that regard.
[00:44:16]  Anybody's living off their 401ks is taking a hit.
[00:44:18]  The best thing we can hope for now, folks, is let's get this mopped up.
[00:44:22]  We're beating them up pretty bad.
[00:44:23]  We've degraded their missile capabilities by 95%, their drone capability by 90%.
[00:44:29]  We're going after the factories that build these systems for them so they can never replicate them for years and years.
[00:44:36]  So like everybody else, we probably didn't want to be in it, but we're in it now.
[00:44:40]  So let's all hope we get this done quickly.
[00:44:43]  We solve the problem and keep Iran down because obviously Iran cannot be trusted.
[00:44:48]  And so here we are, folks.
[00:44:49]  All right.
[00:44:50]  Thanks for the call.
[00:44:51]  John was referencing a strike at the Diego Garcia base, and this is a story about it in the Wall Street Journal.
[00:44:58]  Iran targeted the Diego Garcia base with ballistic missiles.
[00:45:02]  Iran fired two intermediate-range ballistic missiles at Diego Garcia, a joint U.S.-UK military base in the middle of the Indian Ocean, according to multiple U.S. officials.
[00:45:14]  Neither of the missiles hit the base, but the move marked Iran's first operational use of IRBMs and a significant attempt to reach far beyond the Middle East and threaten U.S. interests.
[00:45:25]  One of the missiles failed in flight, and a U.S. warship fired an SM-3 interceptor at the other, according to two of the people.
[00:45:33]  It couldn't be determined if an interception was made, according to one of the officials.
[00:45:38]  Iran's targeting of Diego Garcia, about 2,500 miles from Iran, implies its missiles have a greater range than Tehran has previously acknowledged.
[00:45:48]  The foreign minister said last month that Iran has deliberately limited the range of its missiles to around 1,250 miles.
[00:45:56]  And then this was about the, it goes on to explain the consequences of that.
[00:46:02]  That's in the Wall Street Journal.
[00:46:04]  Let's hear from Jay in Detroit, Michigan on our line for current and former military.
[00:46:09]  Good morning, Jay.
[00:46:12]  Yeah, it's Jay here.
[00:46:14]  Go ahead.
[00:46:14]  Do you support or oppose the war with Iran?
[00:46:17]  I oppose the war.
[00:46:20]  Why is that?
[00:46:23]  Why are we spending money in another country when we can be spending money here?
[00:46:32]  All right.
[00:46:32]  Can you help me on that?
[00:46:34]  I think that's a question for the president and his administration and your lawmakers.
[00:46:39]  Anything else you'd like to add, Jay, from your own experience?
[00:46:43]  It's just crazy, man.
[00:46:46]  They're just throwing money away, throwing our tax dollars away, from my perspective.
[00:46:52]  All right.
[00:46:52]  Let's look at some comments that we've received via text.
[00:46:55]  This is from Tony in Long Island.
[00:46:58]  I agree and support the Iran war for its purpose.
[00:47:01]  What I don't like is the fact that we are not getting any support from our NATO partners.
[00:47:06]  Without the USA, NATO is a paper tiger.
[00:47:10]  This is from Bird in Reston, Virginia.
[00:47:15]  This is from, says, totally support the USA, President, and our brave military members in all phases of this long overdue operation, Free Iran, no nukes.
[00:47:27]  This is Margie in Meadville, Pennsylvania.
[00:47:30]  I support the strikes attempted on Diego Garcia, proves the imminent danger.
[00:47:35]  Kenny is in Sitka, Kentucky, on our line for Republicans.
[00:47:39]  Good morning, Kenny.
[00:47:41]  Hey.
[00:47:42]  Can you please turn down the volume on your TV and then go ahead with your comment on whether you support or oppose the war in Iran?
[00:47:50]  I'm with it.
[00:47:52]  I mean, I agree on it because I think they were the danger.
[00:47:56]  I have a brother who was 40 years in service, and he's retired now.
[00:48:03]  And just all the crap going on over here, you know, they talk about money.
[00:48:11]  Why about all the money they give Joe Biden give them?
[00:48:16]  And then Obama, why don't he put on two planes, stacks and stacks of money?
[00:48:21]  Can you fact check that and see how much money that Obama and Biden give that country?
[00:48:29]  That's like a payoff, ain't it?
[00:48:32]  That's the way I see it.
[00:48:33]  There were payments to Iran settling some sort of long-standing deal that they had that we have covered in the past before, but I want to hear more of your comment.
[00:48:44]  Oh, we've lost him.
[00:48:46]  Okay, well, let's go to Jerry in Tennessee on our line for Democrats.
[00:48:49]  Good morning, Jerry.
[00:48:51]  Yes, ma'am.
[00:48:52]  Thank you for taking my call.
[00:48:53]  I very much oppose this.
[00:48:55]  We seem to lose track of what the thought is.
[00:48:59]  Look at those little boys that are up.
[00:49:01]  They're boys.
[00:49:02]  They're men on those boats heading over today.
[00:49:05]  Can you imagine what shape their mental attitude has got to be in right now?

=== Payoffs to Iran and Caller Comments (15:59) ===

[00:49:09]  This is the big loss.
[00:49:10]  This lady said, you know, he said that he didn't like people that got captured or killed or losers.
[00:49:16]  These boys are not losers.
[00:49:18]  And all they're going to have is a bunch of body bags come back, boys, like we're in Iraq over a bunch of storytelling.
[00:49:25]  And we can't afford this.
[00:49:27]  This, like I said, tax the wealthy, take the wealthy.
[00:49:30]  But does not, no, I don't want to follow this because the only thing we can do would fund this is save a bunch of boys' lives by not funding this.
[00:49:39]  And Obama and them had a deal over it.
[00:49:41]  We didn't have a threat.
[00:49:42]  It's just an ego of him and the fellow over in Israel to go in there.
[00:49:46]  But think of what the big loss is, is there's only been, what, 12 or 14 boys lost.
[00:49:52]  That's the big loss.
[00:49:53]  It's not the money, but it's all said and done.
[00:49:56]  Think what shape them people, them boys' families in today over there.
[00:50:00]  And I hope to send out thoughts and prayers for them people, but thoughts and prayers ain't going to cure the problem.
[00:50:06]  We've seen that over and over again.
[00:50:08]  But I thank you for taking my call.
[00:50:10]  But please remember what's going to happen to those boys that's going over on their boats.
[00:50:14]  And why are we sending 4,000 over if we're going to go on the ground?
[00:50:18]  I mean, you can't tell nothing.
[00:50:19]  The man has the poorest cabinet between Pete Hedgecliffe and Telsey Gabbert.
[00:50:25]  They don't have the intelligence.
[00:50:26]  The intelligence, that's why that school got bombed over there.
[00:50:28]  We have no up-to-date intelligence.
[00:50:30]  And thank you very much for supporting you fellas.
[00:50:32]  Have a great day.
[00:50:34]  In addition to the loss of life that Jerry was mentioning, 232 U.S. service members at least have been wounded since the Iran war began.
[00:50:44]  This is reporting in The Hill.
[00:50:47]  Since the U.S. war with Iran began in late February, 232 U.S. service members have been wounded, with the vast majority of them sustaining minor injuries, a U.S. defense official told The Hill on Friday.
[00:51:00]  More than 200 of them have returned to duty.
[00:51:04]  There have been, the Pentagon has previously said that 13 U.S. service members have been killed in that in the conflict thus far.
[00:51:14]  Jerry was also referencing the Pentagon's $200 billion request to fund the war in Iran, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegset defended that request in comments that he made on Thursday.
[00:51:27]  As far as $200 billion, I think that number could move, obviously.
[00:51:34]  It takes money to kill bad guys.
[00:51:36]  So we're going back to Congress and folks there to ensure that we're properly funded for what's been done, for what we may have to do in the future, ensure that our ammunition is, everything's refilled, and not just refilled, but above and beyond.
[00:51:51]  I mean, President Trump, as he said, rebuilt the military in his first term, didn't think he'd use it as dynamically in his second, but he had.
[00:51:57]  So thank goodness he did that.
[00:51:59]  And an investment like this is meant to say, hey, we'll replace anything that was spent.
[00:52:03]  And now that we're reviving our defense industrial base and rebuilding the Arsenal of Freedom and cutting deals like our great deputy secretaries here is doing, long lead times on exquisite munitions.
[00:52:12]  We're going to be refilled faster than anyone imagined.
[00:52:16]  And I think, you know, we're also still dealing with the environment that Joe Biden created, which was depleting those stockholds and not sending them to our own military, but to Ukraine.
[00:52:28]  Which is when you, every time we reach back and look at any sort of a challenge we have, it goes back to, well, send it to Ukraine.
[00:52:35]  Ultimately, we think this should be these munitions are better spent in our own interests at this point.
[00:52:41]  And this kind of funding bill is going to ensure that we're properly funded going forward.
[00:52:47]  Our question of whether folks support or oppose the war with Iran.
[00:52:52]  Here's a comment from Mike in Marysville, California.
[00:52:55]  I strongly oppose our involvement in Israel's follies.
[00:53:00]  And then Holt in Englewood, Ohio says, I oppose the war.
[00:53:04]  The Iranians have the right to develop weapons and protect themselves by attacking first.
[00:53:10]  We become a rogue nation.
[00:53:13]  Josephine is in Livingston, New Jersey on our line for independence.
[00:53:16]  Good morning, Josephine.
[00:53:18]  Good morning.
[00:53:20]  I oppose what's going on, the way it's being presented by the President.
[00:53:25]  I remember reading in history, although I was born during World War II, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt presented a solid, concise argument for support of what went on in World War II.
[00:53:43]  We don't get this from this president.
[00:53:45]  He treats us like we're jerks.
[00:53:48]  I mean, how many different statements can you make?
[00:53:51]  Let's begin with Russia is now supplying to Iran where our troops are and drones.
[00:54:01]  That's number one.
[00:54:03]  Number two, you're talking about Korea supplying to Iran.
[00:54:09]  That's true.
[00:54:10]  There's no doubt about it.
[00:54:11]  Did Iran go around the world being a rogue support of mischief?
[00:54:18]  That's true.
[00:54:19]  But the truth is, were we in immediate danger?
[00:54:25]  That's the question.
[00:54:26]  The answer is no.
[00:54:28]  Number two, Netanyahu, who unfortunately, I have so much respect for Israel.
[00:54:35]  I remember the 67 war.
[00:54:37]  I remember that.
[00:54:38]  Every war they had been attacked and they defended themselves themselves, not us themselves.
[00:54:46]  And they always said, we don't need you to fight our wars.
[00:54:50]  We are independent.
[00:54:51]  We fight our wars.
[00:54:53]  But not with Netanyahu.
[00:54:55]  I'm sorry.
[00:54:56]  The two of this, unfortunately, I see Israel's point.
[00:55:00]  Oh, we're going to take advantage of going into Iran.
[00:55:04]  I get it.
[00:55:05]  But don't pull us in.
[00:55:08]  We have literally Marines on way to another Third World War.
[00:55:14]  And if you think this isn't a third world war, when November comes and the war is still going on and it was going to be fast, then what are you MAGA people going to tell us?
[00:55:25]  Believe me, you're always doomed to repeat mistakes if you don't understand to learn from the past.
[00:55:32]  We've been told this repeatedly.
[00:55:34]  Vietnam, please, sadly, we're going to lose more voice.
[00:55:39]  13 we've lost.
[00:55:41]  Do you know when you ask most people?
[00:55:43]  They don't know what's six.
[00:55:44]  I was out last night with a relative and said, oh, we only lost six.
[00:55:49]  I said, I'm sorry.
[00:55:50]  We've lost 13 and counting.
[00:55:54]  Thank you.
[00:55:56]  Josephine was referencing Russia sharing intelligence with Iran.
[00:56:00]  This is in the Wall Street Journal as well as a few other places.
[00:56:03]  Russia is sharing satellite imagery and drone technology with Iran.
[00:56:08]  Moscow has expanded intelligence sharing and military cooperation to help keep Tehran in the fight against U.S. and Israeli military might.
[00:56:19]  It says that Russia is trying to keep its closest Middle Eastern partner in the fight against the U.S. and Israeli military might and prolong a war that is benefiting Russia militarily and economically.
[00:56:32]  The technology provided includes components of modified shah head drones, which are meant to improve communication, navigation, and targeting.
[00:56:40]  The sources said Russia has also been drawing on its experience using drones in Ukraine, offering tactical guidance on how many drones should be used in operations and what altitudes they should strike from, said the people who included a senior European intelligence officer.
[00:56:59]  This is again reporting in the Wall Street Journal.
[00:57:01]  Russia has been providing Iran with locations of U.S. military forces in the Middle East as well as those of its regional allies.
[00:57:09]  The Wall Street Journal has reported that cooperation has deepened in the early days of the war, with Russia recently providing satellite imagery directly to Iran, said two of the people, the officer and a Middle Eastern diplomat.
[00:57:23]  Jim is in Florescent, Missouri on our line for Republicans.
[00:57:27]  Good morning, Jim.
[00:57:29]  Good morning, Kimberly.
[00:57:31]  I'd like to answer a couple questions here.
[00:57:34]  First one is, do I support the war or oppose it?
[00:57:39]  My answer to that is I've opposed this war since Iran declared it on us in 1979.
[00:57:48]  We've been at war with them since that point, whether we like it or not.
[00:57:53]  And I don't know.
[00:57:55]  Do we need to declare war back on them before we take action against what they're doing?
[00:58:02]  So they started this fight.
[00:58:05]  They hit us first.
[00:58:06]  And I know there's history beyond that, but that's really what set this whole thing off.
[00:58:14]  The other question I'd like to answer that got asked on this show was, do I think President Trump listens to anybody?
[00:58:22]  Well, he's got people advising him constantly, whether they're his official advisors or unofficial advisors.
[00:58:31]  And it's a matter of whose advice he takes.
[00:58:37]  And I think he ran on dealing with this in an economic manner through economic sanctions and through basically, you know, causing disruption in Iran by choking them off economically.
[00:58:58]  Jim, since you mentioned economic consequences, do you think the economic consequences that we're facing here in the United States as well as in other parts of the world are worth it in this conflict?
[00:59:11]  Do I think they're worth it?
[00:59:12]  Well, I okay.
[00:59:16]  Today we're in a situation that we weren't in a month ago, right?
[00:59:23]  And what I believe should have happened is we should have tried more economic sanctions and worked.
[00:59:32]  We had other countries working with us to do that.
[00:59:37]  And then other people thought we needed to do more militarily.
[00:59:44]  And so here we are.
[00:59:47]  Some of them, maybe it's self-interest.
[00:59:49]  There was a March 18th article on Breitbart and some of Lindsey Graham's ties to funding for different groups out there, both sides of the war.
[01:00:03]  You might want to pull that up and look at it.
[01:00:05]  I don't know whether that's true or not, but it's certainly worth discussing.
[01:00:10]  So, you know, at some point, you got to deal with it head on, but I'm not sure we were there yet.
[01:00:21]  I think we didn't have to do it when we did it.
[01:00:28]  That's just my opinion, but I'm not privy to any intelligence or insight.
[01:00:36]  So was it worth it?
[01:00:38]  I guess time will tell.
[01:00:42]  There are several articles, Jim, talking about Lindsey Graham's ties to various groups related to the Iran conflict in Breitbart News, but we are running out of time for this segment, so I want to get to a couple more callers.
[01:00:55]  John is in Battery Park, Virginia, on our line for current and former military.
[01:01:00]  Good morning, John.
[01:01:03]  I agree with, I support the war, and I agree with the last caller.
[01:01:07]  My concern about the United States and America today is the Democrats that are so willing to lie and the mainstream media that's unbalanced on giving both sides of this story.
[01:01:23]  One caller today complained about Pete Hegseth and Trump's cabinet, and every member of Trump's cabinet from top to bottom is better than the predecessor that was in Biden's, Sleepy Joe's, Bozo Biden's cabinet.
[01:01:42]  I mean, Secretary of Energy, Borders are, Borders are.
[01:01:48]  I mean, Camilla Harris.
[01:01:50]  I mean, unbelievable.
[01:01:53]  The Attorney General attacking Christianity and parents that went before school boards to protest transgenders raping their daughters in bathrooms.
[01:02:07]  John, you said that the mainstream media is only telling one side of the story.
[01:02:12]  What aspect of this conflict do you think that the media is missing?
[01:02:19]  Well, the great concern about 13 soldiers being killed and predicting that thousands will be killed in any future actions.
[01:02:34]  And, you know, were they waiting for atomic, were they waiting?
[01:02:38]  Were they waiting on atomic bombs to land on Washington, D.C. or New York City?
[01:02:47]  i mean they they estimate you know they're claiming they have inside knowledge on on how far along iran was and oh i think we may have lost you there john All right, well, then let's hear from Eileen in Menito, Illinois on our line for independence.
[01:03:09]  Good morning, Eileen.
[01:03:11]  Good morning, and thank you very much, C-SPAN, for providing this wonderful program where we can call, ask questions, let you know how we really feel.
[01:03:23]  I do not support this Iraq war conflict.
[01:03:28]  Trump war is what is happening.
[01:03:30]  You mean Iran?
[01:03:31]  Yeah.
[01:03:32]  Okay, go ahead.
[01:03:34]  And he didn't get this approved through the proper channels with our Congress.
[01:03:42]  And to me, this is still very puzzling why we haven't stopped it.
[01:03:48]  But right now, the Trump and his administration and the Republicans that are in power that have supported him are not following the rules of our own American country.
[01:04:03]  It's very frustrating, and it's very sad that we're sending our own wonderful young men and women in the service over there to put their lives at risk, showing the other countries over there that it's okay for us to bomb and bomb and bomb innocent women, children, people that aren't involved in the war.
[01:04:30]  I wish we could stop it.
[01:04:32]  War doesn't bring about any wonderful obstacle, only more devastation, and I'm sure more money and power brought on to his family because now they're getting into making the drones.
[01:04:49]  I wish that we were more of a country open to all ideas and not just the people watching Fox News and that stream and then our news and our stream and open to all ideas that we were better equipped to make good decisions.

=== Support for the War with Iran (03:55) ===

[01:05:09]  I think Trump is only listening to the powers that are influencing him, which is Israel, the Netanyahu, and Russia, Putin.
[01:05:19]  I wonder what Putin has on our president.
[01:05:23]  So I want to get to a couple more comments from Frank in Bend, Oregon.
[01:05:29]  I support the war with Iran.
[01:05:30]  It's been a long time coming, and they had it coming on top of it.
[01:05:34]  I just hope that our nation benefits from it.
[01:05:37]  By that, I mean financially.
[01:05:39]  And Allen in Winston-Salem, North Carolina says, I oppose the way Trump started it, didn't meet with our allies or U.N. Security Council, didn't notify or talk to Congress first.
[01:05:52]  Patrick is in La Miranda, California on our line for Republicans.
[01:05:56]  Good morning, Patrick.
[01:05:57]  Good morning.
[01:05:58]  Thank you for taking my call.
[01:06:00]  Yes, I am supportive of the war in Iran.
[01:06:04]  This has been a long time overcoming.
[01:06:10]  They're an evil government.
[01:06:12]  I mean, the way they treat their women is an abomination.
[01:06:17]  And also, we need to protect Israel because that's still the apple of God's eye.
[01:06:25]  And I just, you know, but, you know, It's got to get done because these people, there is no talk of these people.
[01:06:44]  I mean, they lie and they cheat.
[01:06:48]  Yes, I am fully supportive of our president.
[01:06:51]  I think he's doing a wonderful job.
[01:06:53]  Thank you very much.
[01:06:54]  Well, thank you to everybody who called in this hour.
[01:06:58]  Coming up later on Washington Journal, we'll be joined by Michael Tomanski, editor of the New Republic, who will discuss the political news of the week.
[01:07:06]  But coming up, we'll speak with Rich Lowry, editor-in-chief of the National Review, to discuss Campaign 2026, the U.S.-Israel combat operations against Iran, and other political news of the week.
[01:07:18]  We'll be right back.
[01:07:25]  Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series.
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[01:07:45]  He joins our host, civic leader, best-selling author, and owner of the Baltimore Orioles, David Rubinstein.
[01:07:52]  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.
[01:08:09]  So I just enjoyed the process.
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=== Military Planning and European Allies (11:50) ===

[01:09:04]  Welcome back for a discussion on the ongoing conflict with Iran as well as other political news of the week.
[01:09:09]  We're joined now by Rich Lowry, who's the editor-in-chief of the National Review.
[01:09:14]  Welcome back to Washington Journal.
[01:09:17]  Hi, thanks for having me.
[01:09:18]  There have been several developments over the weekend with those longer-range missiles launched by Iran, as well as the president saying that Iran only has 48 hours to open the Strait of Hormuz or face attacks on their power facilities.
[01:09:32]  What is your assessment of the state of affairs in our war with Iran right now?
[01:09:38]  Well, it's mixed.
[01:09:39]  We've had great, displayed great technical proficiency and have had great tactical victories, terms of killing top Iranian leaders, diminishing their ability to launch missiles and drones.
[01:09:52]  So I don't think the military element of this, I don't think time is on Iran's side.
[01:09:57]  I think they have a math problem and eventually we might not get them to zero, but we're going to really significantly degrade their ability to hit their neighbors and to threaten the Strait of Hormuz.
[01:10:08]  But politically and economically, time is not on our side, on Trump's side.
[01:10:14]  Obviously, every day the Strait of Hormuz is closed and you have energy infrastructure threatened across the region.
[01:10:21]  You see upward pressure, not just on the price of oil, but all sorts of other things, most notably fertilizer.
[01:10:28]  So the Strait needs to reopen as soon as possible.
[01:10:31]  That's going to be a big challenge.
[01:10:33]  Trump is trying to threaten them out of it.
[01:10:35]  Their grip on the strait in various ways.
[01:10:38]  One, threatening Karag Island, obliterating their military facilities on that island a couple days ago.
[01:10:44]  Now, this threat against the power plants in Iran.
[01:10:48]  I'm not sure he can threaten this regime out of anything.
[01:10:52]  I think if the strait is going to reopen, it's going to have to be done by direct military means is my guess.
[01:10:57]  In addition to all those concerns, the polling does not show that Americans are very supportive of this ongoing conflict.
[01:11:04]  There's Werter's Ipsos survey showing that 59% of Americans disapprove the U.S. strikes on Iran compared to just 37% who approve it, including only about one in five Republicans that actually approves of the war.
[01:11:21]  Does Iran pose, does this issue pose a threat to the Republican Party, especially as we're heading into the midterms?
[01:11:31]  Yes.
[01:11:32]  If you continue to see elevated gas prices, and I think that's a really important economic metric, obviously, stands for cost of living, felt by everyone, advertised basically on every street corner in America, even if you're not filling your tank on any given day.
[01:11:45]  You see that number, which is now approaching four on average, $4 a gallon across the country.
[01:11:52]  That's a major downside as well as the other economic disruption.
[01:11:56]  So I think if Trump is successful here, say the Strait of Hormuz is reopened in the next month and there may be a low-level conflict ongoing, but not at this level, and he can declare a victory.
[01:12:12]  I don't think there's a huge political upside.
[01:12:14]  I don't think people are voting for Republicans because we've won a war with Iran, but I think we would avoid some of the downsides.
[01:12:21]  So I think this is in sheer political terms, this is all downside for Republicans.
[01:12:28]  There's been no rally around the flag effect, which is very unusual in these sort of conflicts.
[01:12:32]  There wasn't a wave of public opinion in support of this beforehand.
[01:12:36]  In fact, there's very little case made for it beforehand, which I think relates to some of the difficulties we've seen or the lack of fully accounting of the potential downsides.
[01:12:46]  I think if you have a full debate over that, you go to Congress, all the critics of the action opponents the action will say, well, they're going to close the Strait of Hormuz.
[01:12:53]  What are you going to do about it?
[01:12:54]  And then you have to really think through and make the public case.
[01:12:57]  Well, you know what?
[01:12:57]  We're going to have every minesweeper we have is going to be there.
[01:13:00]  We're going to get the Europeans on board and get all their minesweepers there, and we'll have X number of minesweepers.
[01:13:06]  So that will really help.
[01:13:07]  And then people would say, well, wait a minute, the Europeans seem reluctant.
[01:13:10]  Then you say, well, we're going to go get them now in advance, you know, and secure their agreement.
[01:13:15]  So there are a whole host of things that I think could have been sussed out to a much greater extent if this weren't just basically the pejorative way to put it.
[01:13:23]  It's kind of a seat of the pants decision by the president.
[01:13:26]  Not that there wasn't a lot of military planning, not that there hasn't been a lot of military successes, but I think there have been significant downsides here that weren't fully accounted for in advance.
[01:13:36]  And there's potential escalation coming, although last Thursday President Trump said he would not send U.S. troops to the Middle East.
[01:13:44]  Later that day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised the possibility of on-the-ground action.
[01:13:49]  We've heard multiple reports of troops on their way to the region.
[01:13:53]  And then there's a Reuters-Ipsos poll that says only about six, that found that 65% of U.S. adults think that Trump will eventually order troops into a large ground-scale invasion, but only 7% back a large-scale invasion.
[01:14:11]  34% say they would back it if it was special forces.
[01:14:15]  But 55% say that they would not support a ground invasion of Iran.
[01:14:21]  What do you think is the likelihood that we would see the boots on the ground, as it were?
[01:14:27]  So I think you have to make a distinction between a large-scale ground invasion.
[01:14:31]  I can't see that scenario.
[01:14:33]  Maybe.
[01:14:34]  Seems extremely unlikely to me.
[01:14:36]  But I think the likelihood of ground troops being deployed in some form or another, whether it's on Karg Island, whether it's on islands that are in the Strait of Hormuz or would be important to freeing up the Strait of Hormuz or on the shore of the Strait of Hormuz.
[01:14:51]  I've had some military experts say we can't do this without ground troops securing the shore.
[01:14:56]  I think the likelihood of that has increased pretty markedly over the last couple weeks.
[01:15:03]  Last week, NATO Secretary General said that the Allies would and would not be willing to do certain things in relation to supporting the United States in this effort to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
[01:15:19]  What's been your take on how NATO allies and other allies have responded to this request from the President for more support?
[01:15:28]  Yes, I think their initial reaction, which is no, go pound sand.
[01:15:32]  It was understandably understandable emotionally, this administration that has insulted Europe almost every opportunity they've had and gone beyond the insult to actually threatening them.
[01:15:42]  We had a story last couple days on how Denmark and France and the UK were engaged in no-kidding military plans to repulse or at least bloody a potential U.S. invasion of Greenland.
[01:15:55]  So your allies, they're not going to be very inclined to do what you want when you're in a pinch if that's how you've treated them or how you've scared them.
[01:16:04]  That said, I think it was unwise for them initially to say, oh, go pound sand.
[01:16:08]  I think they just would have said, yes, we're going to help you in any way we can.
[01:16:12]  As soon as we see a plan that we think is plausible to reopen the strait, this is an important issue for everyone around the world, especially including us here in Europe.
[01:16:21]  So yes, President Trump, we're going to help you.
[01:16:24]  But the U.S. inevitably is going to take a walk point on any effort to clear the Strait.
[01:16:29]  So it wouldn't be as though their minesweepers are the first to go in or anything like that.
[01:16:34]  So they've come back a little bit to that position with the statement they released the last couple days, basically say, yeah, yeah, we're here to help, but let's talk about it more.
[01:16:42]  And I think that would have been a more sensible posture.
[01:16:45]  But look, this is there are very few major military operations that have so been on one man.
[01:16:52]  And that man is Donald Trump.
[01:16:54]  This was his decision, his decision alone.
[01:16:56]  Didn't consult Congress or go for authorization, as I mentioned earlier.
[01:17:00]  Didn't consult his allies.
[01:17:02]  I think he was queued up by the success of the operation in Venezuela to think we could do this in Iran too.
[01:17:11]  And you decapitate the leadership and you have a very quick change of regime or at least adjustment of the regime's attitude and you go home.
[01:17:19]  And that hasn't happened.
[01:17:21]  Let's listen to some of the comments from NATO Secretary General Mark Rotte about the question of the relationship with NATO, the United States' relationship with NATO, and what they are prepared to do when it comes to the Strait of Hormuz.
[01:17:35]  First of all, in my context with allies all over NATO territory, what I'm sensing and hearing is that we all agree, as we always did, that it was crucial for Iran not to get its hands on a nuclear capability, a ballistic missile capability.
[01:17:56]  And what the U.S. is doing at the moment is degrading that capability of Iran.
[01:18:00]  And I think that's very important.
[01:18:01]  This is important for European security, for the Middle East.
[01:18:05]  It is vital for Israel itself.
[01:18:08]  A nuclear Iran would potentially have been a direct threat to the future of Israel, but again, to the whole Middle East and to Europe.
[01:18:20]  Then when it comes to the Hormuz Strait, Everybody agrees.
[01:18:25]  This strait cannot stay closed.
[01:18:27]  It has to open up again as soon as possible.
[01:18:30]  This is crucial for the world's economy.
[01:18:32]  It is also crucial because it's unacceptable if a key sea lane is not closed or is so difficult to use that sea lane because of all the threats currently there.
[01:18:44]  What I'm, in my context, which allies are seeing, is that they are intensely discussing amongst each other with the United States and amongst each other the best way forward to tackle this huge security issue.
[01:18:58]  And let me add to that that I'm confident that allies, as always, will do everything in support of our shared interests, as we always do.
[01:19:09]  So we will find a way forward.
[01:19:12]  Rich Lowry, you write in the National Review that Iran is challenging a bedrock of American geopolitical power when it comes to the Strait of Hormuz.
[01:19:22]  Can you explain what you mean by that and if it's significant enough for the U.S. to kind of go it alone here if the European allies don't step up?
[01:19:30]  Yeah, so first of all, I think the Secretary General is great.
[01:19:33]  I think he's sober-minded, responsible, and constructive.
[01:19:36]  And I think everything he said there was spot-on.
[01:19:38]  But look, this is a key global commitment of the United States.
[01:19:41]  Key geopolitical commitment, foundation of our geopolitical power is keeping free navigation in important waterways around the world.
[01:19:50]  This is something the British Navy did when they were preeminent for a very long time.
[01:19:54]  They passed the baton to us around the time of World War II.
[01:19:57]  And this is why we have a fifth fleet, to keep the Strait of Hormuz open.
[01:20:02]  So on top of everything else, the economic and geopolitical effects, this would be a national humiliation if Iran were able to effectively control the Strait of Hormuz going forward.
[01:20:15]  This regime that has never been hugely powerful, it's never been a world power.
[01:20:20]  It's had significant regional power over time.
[01:20:23]  But a regime that has been bombed for weeks now is as weak as it's ever been.
[01:20:30]  If it can defy the most powerful country in the world and have this chokehold on the global economy, that would be a terrible thing for our country in all sorts of ways.
[01:20:41]  So there's no alternative than for us to go do this alone.
[01:20:47]  Hopefully we get help, but we're going to be the leaders of any effort to do this.
[01:20:51]  And if we can't do it, no one else is doing it for us.

=== Senate Filibuster Reform Debate (02:07) ===

[01:20:54]  We'll be taking questions for Rich Lowry of the National Review.
[01:20:57]  Our phone line for Democrats is 202-7488000.
[01:21:01]  For Republicans, 202-748-8001.
[01:21:04]  And for Independents, 202-748-8002.
[01:21:08]  Rich, before we get to the calls, I want to ask you about something else in the National Review, an editorial about the SAVE Act.
[01:21:16]  And the headline here is: the SAVE Act's virtuous goals are not worth the cost.
[01:21:22]  This is a legislation that's being debated in the Senate that would change the way that federal officials or the federal government is involved in elections.
[01:21:31]  Can you talk about why you think, why the National Review thinks the SAVE Act is not worth it?
[01:21:38]  Yeah, so we very much support the underlying goals.
[01:21:40]  Voter ID is a common sense measure.
[01:21:42]  There's no evidence anywhere.
[01:21:43]  It suppresses the vote because everyone has an ID.
[01:21:46]  If they don't have an ID, they should get an ID to participate in the mainstream of American life.
[01:21:50]  Also, obviously, people should have proof of citizenship that they're here, that they're citizens and can vote before they register to vote.
[01:21:58]  All that's clear and obvious, but we support the federal system we have in our elections.
[01:22:03]  And these ultimately are state matters and local matters are better if they're handled by the states and localities.
[01:22:09]  But even if you disagree with us and you say all these things should be imposed federally, one, they're not 50 votes for this legislation currently.
[01:22:19]  Mitch McConnell is very much against federalizing elections.
[01:22:22]  Lisa Murkowski is against this because of how elections are conducted in Alaska, which is very idiosyncratic compared to other states because of the rural nature of it and the vast spaces involved.
[01:22:32]  Tom Tillis is not enamored of it.
[01:22:33]  North Carolina has mail-in voting, which they're talking about saying you can no longer have no excuse mail-in voting.
[01:22:41]  And there are a lot of states where Republicans have become very adept at mail-in voting.
[01:22:44]  So even if you think it should pass, it's not going to pass.
[01:22:47]  And then to eliminate or have a rifle shot through the filibuster to try to pass it makes no sense because again, you don't have 50 votes.
[01:22:56]  You certainly don't have 60 votes, so you have to eliminate the filibuster to get close to it.

=== Federalizing Elections and State Laws (10:55) ===

[01:23:02]  And then you've left this loaded gun on the table that potentially would be exploded, exploited by Democrats if they take over in 2028.
[01:23:11]  And there are very few things that you can imagine big things in the next nine to 10 months that Republicans want to do that would make eliminating or weakening the filibuster worth it.
[01:23:21]  I think most big things they couldn't even get 50 votes for, similar to this legislation.
[01:23:25]  But if Democrats come in, take the House, take the Senate, take the presidency in 28, and the filibuster is already gone, so there's no difficulty for them there, or there's been a precedent for eliminating the filibuster for important things you want to get through, then it's Katie bar the door, because I think they very much would want to add DC as a state potentially, Puerto Rico as a state, maybe stack the Supreme Court.
[01:23:45]  These would be big, irreversible things.
[01:23:47]  So the president really wants this legislation.
[01:23:50]  A lot of people in the Republican base, very whipped up about it, but I think the party is just going to have to take the L on this one.
[01:23:56]  All right, let's hear from our callers.
[01:23:58]  Amelia is in Chicago, Illinois, on our line for Democrats.
[01:24:02]  Good morning, Amelia.
[01:24:03]  Good morning.
[01:24:04]  Good morning, Mr. Lowry.
[01:24:06]  We all believe we should love our neighbors.
[01:24:09]  Right now, thousands are dying, including hundreds of children, and the world economy is set on fire.
[01:24:16]  What responsibility do you think the president bears for starting this economically and humanely reckless war?
[01:24:28]  Well, very direct responsibility.
[01:24:30]  We wouldn't have launched this operation if he didn't want to do it.
[01:24:33]  And there's some who want to, on the isolationist right, who want REO is forced into it by B.B. Netanyahu and there's no choice.
[01:24:40]  No one tells Donald Trump what to do.
[01:24:42]  And he's not going to get pushed around by anyone around the world, including by a country of 9 million people in the Middle East.
[01:24:48]  So he launched this war.
[01:24:49]  But I very much agree with a caller we heard from right before I came on, I think right around 8 a.m. or so, who said this war has been going on for 50 years.
[01:24:58]  This is a regime that's been hostile to the United States since its inception, arguably the most anti-American regime in the world, with American blood on its hands up to its elbows.
[01:25:09]  And this was going to be a growing and intolerable threat.
[01:25:12]  So I don't agree with we absolutely had to launch this war three weeks ago, but I do think there's a necessary war in the sense that you couldn't allow the Iranians to reconstitute all their missile forces and go bigger and better than they were before at the same time they wanted to develop a nuclear weapon.
[01:25:30]  That was an intolerable situation because eventually they would have gotten strong enough.
[01:25:35]  It's been very hard to do this war now.
[01:25:37]  They've imposed downsides on us.
[01:25:40]  What would it look like two or three years from now?
[01:25:42]  Maybe they could more reliably hit Diego Garcia.
[01:25:45]  And by the way, those missiles they launched just a day or two ago had a much longer range than anyone knew and that the Iranian regime had ever admitted.
[01:25:54]  So you get a nuclear weapon and you put it on top of a missile that can potentially reach Paris.
[01:26:00]  That should be an intolerable threat to the rest of the world and obviously to us as well.
[01:26:05]  So my hat's off for Donald Trump for grasping the nettle.
[01:26:08]  And there was a seal around Iran for decades.
[01:26:12]  They could hit us with our proxies and we could never hit them directly.
[01:26:14]  We could fight their proxies, we could impose sanctions, but we could never hit them directly.
[01:26:18]  He broke that seal last June with Operation Midnight Hammer, and he's gone further here.
[01:26:23]  So I'm supportive of the effort.
[01:26:25]  I hope it succeeds, but I'm trying to be clear-eyed about the downsides and where we are right at the moment.
[01:26:31]  More from that Reuters-Ipsos poll on American support for those U.S. strikes on Iran.
[01:26:37]  Not surprisingly, 77% of Republicans say they approve of the U.S. strikes on Iran.
[01:26:43]  28% of independents, just 6% of Democrats support it.
[01:26:48]  Rich Lowry, you just gave reasoning for the war right now, but many have argued that the president has not been clear on the reasons that we've actually entered this conflict, and he has given multiple narratives about this.
[01:27:02]  What do you think it's going to take to get a consistent message from the president on this?
[01:27:08]  I don't think we're ever going to get an incredibly consistent message from the president.
[01:27:12]  This is just how he operates.
[01:27:14]  He likes to preserve his options.
[01:27:17]  He feels though this approach has worked for him his whole adult life, and it's hard to argue against that, given that he's now his second term as president of the United States.
[01:27:24]  But there are downsides in situations like this one, obviously, to this approach.
[01:27:29]  Now, I do think you can look and see the core of the argument here.
[01:27:34]  We want to further dismantle their nuclear program.
[01:27:37]  We want to dismantle their ability to manufacture and launch missiles and drones, and we want to further reduce their regional power.
[01:27:47]  And we hope there is some more practical player who emerges from this regime who's willing to negotiate about those things in a way that would be more favorable to us or the regime false.
[01:27:59]  But that's a little bit of a secondary goal.
[01:28:02]  The main thing is to eliminate their military might and their regional reach.
[01:28:07]  But he's just going to, you know, he loves governing through Truth Social, and it is not always very consistent.
[01:28:13]  And I do think that's a big downside in terms of making the public case for this conflict.
[01:28:18]  Jerry is in Crane, Texas, on our line for Republicans.
[01:28:21]  Good morning, Jerry.
[01:28:24]  Yes, hey, great.
[01:28:25]  Rich, yeah, what a pleasure.
[01:28:28]  I have a question about a disparity.
[01:28:31]  You're the perfect person to ask.
[01:28:34]  It's about to say that in voter ID.
[01:28:38]  Okay.
[01:28:40]  Why is it that roughly 70% of the Democratic Party out there, the electorate, 70% support voter ID, but not one Democrat in Congress?
[01:28:56]  In fact, they'll get hostile at just the mention of voter ID.
[01:29:00]  It's amazing.
[01:29:01]  And then you see all these Democrats on the House of the Senate have they been debating it and all these Democrats lying about.
[01:29:12]  Yeah, well, they've just convinced themselves that asking people to show any form of ID constitutes Jim Crow 2.0 or Jim Eagle, as somewhat mystifyingly, Joe Biden said during an election debate during his time in office.
[01:29:29]  But this has become a quasi-religious commitment, and it's completely absurd.
[01:29:34]  As you point out, the polling shows almost universal support for voter ID.
[01:29:38]  We have a lot of states in the Union already have it.
[01:29:41]  And again, there's no evidence whatsoever that it suppresses the vote.
[01:29:46]  So this is a near-theological commitment of theirs that, in my view, makes zero sense.
[01:29:52]  Patrick is in Fruitland Park, Florida on our line for independence.
[01:29:55]  Good morning, Patrick.
[01:29:58]  Well, thanks for taking my call.
[01:30:00]  I think there's a lot of things left out in this discussion.
[01:30:04]  Ariel Sharon was labeled the butcher of Beirut by his own country's judicial system, said he should never hold public office.
[01:30:15]  He spent 20 years chanting greater Israel by force.
[01:30:19]  He elected P.M. Perez, one of the ex, I think it was Perez, who said there should be a two-state solution.
[01:30:29]  He was publicly assassinated by an Israeli terrorist.
[01:30:34]  Rich Lowry, you know that if C-SPAM would read the After Actions report of the bombing in Beirut, the U.S. Navy was shelling certain groups over there.
[01:30:50]  The Marines landed.
[01:30:52]  The Marines there told, we're taking increasing sniper fire.
[01:30:56]  We're going to be attacked.
[01:30:57]  They were told, no, stay, stay.
[01:30:59]  So we shot at people and they shot back.
[01:31:03]  You never mentioned that.
[01:31:05]  There was two takeovers.
[01:31:07]  Patrick, can you help us connect this to the conflict happening with Iran now?
[01:31:12]  I understand that there's a lot of history leading up to it, but what was your question for Rich Lowry?
[01:31:19]  This constant, oh, Israel, poor Israel, they never do anything wrong.
[01:31:24]  We got to support them.
[01:31:26]  How big is their country now through illegal settlements?
[01:31:30]  Wasn't Hamas or Hezbollah started?
[01:31:33]  Because you're not taking any more of our land through illegal settlements.
[01:31:38]  This constant one century.
[01:31:40]  So which of these points are you asking Rich Lowry to respond to?
[01:31:46]  C-SPAM.
[01:31:51]  Yeah, I think I get the drift of the caller's case, which is Israel is this vicious expansionist power and kind of gets what it deserves.
[01:31:59]  And it's understandable that it has these terrorist forces ringing it and trying to destroy it.
[01:32:04]  And I just don't agree with that at all.
[01:32:07]  If Hamas and Hezbollah stood down tomorrow, really, would Israel be attacking southern Lebanon and attempting, you know, engaged in repeated incursions of southern Lebanon over time, over decades?
[01:32:18]  No, of course not.
[01:32:20]  If everyone else accepted Israel's existence, which we accept most countries' existence all around the world, you'd have normality in the Middle East.
[01:32:28]  And Israel is a Western-oriented country.
[01:32:32]  It has its flaws.
[01:32:33]  You don't need to like Ariel Sharon or B.B. Netanyahu.
[01:32:36]  You know, 40% of Israelis hate B.B. Netanyahu with a burning passion.
[01:32:40]  So all that's totally fine.
[01:32:42]  But this is a country that has a right to exist, shouldn't be wiped from the map.
[01:32:47]  And as soon as you have the countries or players around it accepting that, I think you unlock a region that is at peace and can go about developing itself and maybe giving its citizens rights of the sort they have in Israel.
[01:33:04]  That would be a wonderful thing.
[01:33:06]  There is fighting in Lebanon happening now.
[01:33:10]  There's a story in the New York Times from yesterday.
[01:33:13]  Israel strikes across Lebanon amid fierce groundfighting in the south.
[01:33:17]  The Israeli military said it was stepping up attacks aimed at infrastructure in Beirut belonging to Hezbollah.
[01:33:25]  This is the violence came as people around Lebanon attempted to celebrate Adel Fitr, which marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
[01:33:34]  At the same time, heavy rain and thunder swept through the capital, Beirut, where many displaced people are camping outside and have nowhere else to go as the war approaches its fourth week.
[01:33:45]  The Israeli military said in a statement that it was targeting infrastructure in Beirut belonging to Hezbollah with an increasing intensity, just as another sort of front in this ongoing conflict.

=== Israel Strikes Lebanon Amid Fierce Fighting (13:00) ===

[01:33:58]  Let's hear from George in Elgin, Texas on our line for Democrats.
[01:34:02]  Good morning, George.
[01:34:04]  Good morning, C-SPAN.
[01:34:06]  Good morning, Mr. Lowry.
[01:34:08]  Thank you for taking my call.
[01:34:12]  This is kind of in response to the from Texas on the SAVE Act.
[01:34:16]  You said there's states in the Union that currently have voter ID.
[01:34:21]  And Texas is one of those states.
[01:34:24]  We've had voter ID for years.
[01:34:26]  You go in there with your voter registration card, they set it aside, and they ask for your ID immediately.
[01:34:31]  And you don't vote without that ID.
[01:34:33]  So I don't know what you're complaining about.
[01:34:35]  But there's another thing about that.
[01:34:38]  My wife and I have been together 50 years.
[01:34:42]  And we've had driver's license for longer than that.
[01:34:44]  And in Texas, your driver's license number doesn't change throughout your life.
[01:34:50]  It remains the same.
[01:34:51]  So we went together to renew our driver's license.
[01:34:55]  And she's Hispanic.
[01:34:57]  She's brown.
[01:34:58]  She had black hair and a black eye.
[01:35:01]  And I'm white.
[01:35:01]  And we had two lines that day at the driver's license office.
[01:35:05]  I had no problem.
[01:35:06]  I got my driver renewed.
[01:35:08]  When she went up there today and said, ma'am, you need to show us a birth certificate or a passport.
[01:35:16]  And so she reached in her purse and pulled out her passport and handed it across the counter.
[01:35:21]  And the lady looked at her and said, ma'am, this is a passport.
[01:35:26]  And she goes, that's right.
[01:35:27]  Because she was stunned that somebody Brown could immediately jump through that hoop.
[01:35:33]  So the SAVE Act is a useless piece of legislation.
[01:35:38]  It's already been done here in Texas.
[01:35:40]  Texas has been under control of Republicans for over 25 years.
[01:35:45]  And all it is is Jim Crow.
[01:35:48]  You remember Barack Obama.
[01:35:50]  He had to show us birth certificate.
[01:35:51]  The President of the United States had to show us birth certificates.
[01:35:54]  George, I want to give Rich Lowry a chance to respond because some of these points that you're raising are ones that have been raised by many Democrats who are concerned that issuing the types of policies under the SAVE Act would lead to situations like the one Greg was described.
[01:36:12]  Yeah, I have no idea what the person in the voter registrar's office or the DMV was thinking in that interaction with the gentleman's wife.
[01:36:21]  I take his point.
[01:36:22]  He's correct.
[01:36:22]  There are a lot of states that have voter ID.
[01:36:24]  That's what I said.
[01:36:25]  And it's not a problem, as he also pointed out, is something I agree with.
[01:36:30]  Now, there are potential practical difficulties when it comes to how Republicans want people around the country to produce evidence that they are U.S. citizens.
[01:36:41]  So that's another reason I think it's just better for states to handle this.
[01:36:45]  And at National Review, we want people to have to prove that they're citizens.
[01:36:50]  Common sense have to produce an ID, but we're not sure that this federal legislation is the best way.
[01:36:56]  Imposing a national standard for all this is the best solution.
[01:37:00]  Homer is in Florence, Massachusetts, on our line for Republicans.
[01:37:04]  Good morning, Homer.
[01:37:05]  Good morning, Kimberly.
[01:37:06]  I just wanted to say thanks for your poll earlier of 3,651 people in a country of 355 million.
[01:37:12]  I don't think it means much.
[01:37:14]  Homer, what do you think is an appropriate sample size for public opinion surveys to where you would feel confident in their outcome?
[01:37:22]  There would be no poll that could possibly give me an example of 355 million diverse people in this country.
[01:37:28]  But I wanted to say to Rich Lowry, was it a war when Barack Obama bombed for eight months in Libya?
[01:37:33]  Did he get approval from the Congress?
[01:37:35]  And also when they bombed Syria?
[01:37:37]  Or what about when Biden bombed Syria, Libya, and Lebanon?
[01:37:42]  I mean, I'm just curious, because we didn't call it a war then.
[01:37:45]  Those were just, oh, what?
[01:37:49]  I think we've got the idea.
[01:37:52]  Yeah, no, I take that point.
[01:37:54]  Look, those were wars.
[01:37:57]  I think it's absurd this tradition we now have in this country.
[01:38:02]  I'm not calling significant military operations acts of war.
[01:38:05]  They clearly are.
[01:38:06]  This is a war now.
[01:38:08]  And I don't think as a technical legal matter, President Trump had to go to Congress on this.
[01:38:15]  I think Iran did provide aid to the September 11th hijackers in al-Qaeda.
[01:38:21]  So the so-called AUMF does apply here, but that's quite dusty.
[01:38:26]  That's quite long ago, so I think it's a prudential matter.
[01:38:29]  That's an operation for use of military force.
[01:38:32]  Correct.
[01:38:33]  But I think as a prudential matter, in keeping with the spirit of the Constitution, it would have been better if he went to Congress.
[01:38:39]  But he also has, as Caller points out, a lot of precedent for other military actions, other acts of war, that presidents undertook on their own.
[01:38:46]  So it's not as though anyone's going to take him to court and stop this war.
[01:38:51]  The Justice Department or the Office of Legal Counsel will have lots of reasons to say he had the authority to do this on his own.
[01:38:58]  I just think it would have been better in all sorts of ways if he'd gone to Congress beforehand.
[01:39:03]  Kate is in Missouri on our line for independence.
[01:39:06]  Good morning, Kate.
[01:39:08]  Good morning.
[01:39:10]  What's your question for Rich Lowry?
[01:39:12]  My question is, because there are so many parts of the SAVE Act, they're already covered in the various states, could there be anything in the SAVE Act that gives the president, but could it be used as a stepping stone for federalization?
[01:39:31]  Kate, your line is cutting in and out.
[01:39:33]  Could you ask that question again, please?
[01:39:35]  Sure.
[01:39:36]  Is there anything in a SAVE Act that the President could use as a stepping stone toward further federalization?
[01:39:44]  Okay.
[01:39:45]  You're still cutting in and out, but I believe what you were asking is there's something in the SAVE Act.
[01:39:50]  Okay.
[01:39:53]  Yeah, for us, it's another potential downside.
[01:39:56]  It's not as though Democrats haven't tried to federalize elections on their own.
[01:39:59]  There's a big effort in the Biden administration as well.
[01:40:02]  We just don't think Republicans should provide more precedent for doing that.
[01:40:06]  So again, as a prudential matter, we'd prefer that this handled by states.
[01:40:12]  Mark is in East Northport, New York on our line for Republicans.
[01:40:16]  Good morning, Mark.
[01:40:19]  Good morning.
[01:40:20]  As a veteran, my question to you is, do you think people underestimate how often leadership has to act on information the public isn't aware of?
[01:40:28]  And how do you explain those decisions to the people who only see it after the fact?
[01:40:36]  So, sorry, it was a little fuzzy.
[01:40:38]  How often the president has to act on threats that people aren't aware of.
[01:40:41]  Yes, how often leaders have to make decisions based on non-public information and how they explain those decisions.
[01:40:50]  Yeah, I think it happens fairly often in the scheme of things.
[01:40:54]  It's usually smaller scale than what we're seeing here in the war against Iran.
[01:41:01]  So I don't think that really applies here.
[01:41:05]  I think everything you need to know, you could have made the case publicly beforehand.
[01:41:10]  But one thing I'm mystified talking about things that aren't public is why if the United States and Israel are so bent on toppling this regime, something that I support and hope happens, why there wasn't more effort to have some sort of covert action to arm an opposition in Iran.
[01:41:31]  Because it's very hard to do regime change from the air.
[01:41:33]  When you have a ground force that's armed working in conjunction with air cover, which could be very close and very coordinated given some of the extraordinary technical operations we've seen here, then it's possible to unlock more possibilities.
[01:41:50]  But for some reason, that didn't happen.
[01:41:53]  So maybe it has happened.
[01:41:54]  We don't know about it, and we're going to learn about it soon.
[01:41:56]  But it doesn't seem to have happened.
[01:41:58]  And I'm not sure why that was the case.
[01:42:01]  Crystal's in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on our line for Democrats.
[01:42:04]  Good morning, Crystal.
[01:42:07]  Yes, good morning.
[01:42:08]  If you just let me get two points across.
[01:42:10]  First of all, I think that if Israel and the United States and many other countries have nuclear weapons, I think every country should have them and maybe they'll stop fighting each other.
[01:42:23]  That's number one.
[01:42:24]  Number two, as a black woman in America, Iran has never called me the N-word, has never said we eat cats and dogs.
[01:42:34]  I have no problem with them whatsoever.
[01:42:37]  I stand with Iran.
[01:42:40]  Thank you and have a good day.
[01:42:44]  Okay, that's quite the strong take, I would say.
[01:42:49]  There are a lot of countries around the world that have nuclear weapons, some that shouldn't.
[01:42:53]  North Korea at the top of that list, but we don't have to worry that, say, France is going to randomly nuke someone or hold the world hostage.
[01:42:59]  It's not going to happen.
[01:43:01]  It's a liberal Western country.
[01:43:03]  That's not true of Iran.
[01:43:05]  And it's just intolerable to have this apocalyptic, religious extremist theocracy with the power to threaten the entire region and to stay the region's hands or the hands of the United States of America if we undertake even more threatening actions around the region.
[01:43:24]  So this is why it's been a matter of bipartisan consensus.
[01:43:27]  Every recent president, Republican or Democrat, said Iran can't have a nuclear weapon.
[01:43:32]  Now, you have different means of attempting to achieve that or maybe not quite achieve it or let Iran sit on the cusp of a nuclear weapon.
[01:43:40]  That's what Barack Obama's approach was.
[01:43:42]  But everyone said they can't do this.
[01:43:45]  And the idea that because President Trump has said controversial things, he's comparable to the Iranians, or the Iranians are even better, is obviously preposterous and shameful.
[01:43:56]  President Trump is the leader of our country.
[01:43:59]  He's been duly elected.
[01:44:01]  We have a constitutional system.
[01:44:03]  We have a free country, et cetera.
[01:44:06]  And Iran is none of those things.
[01:44:08]  It has been a blight on the region since its inception nearly 50 years ago.
[01:44:15]  And it would be great if it went away and there are a different regime there, a different government there that actually honored the rights of its citizens, that didn't massacre its citizens in the streets if they had the temerity to engage in protest marches.
[01:44:27]  So I'm not sure that's going to happen as a result of this military operation, but it'd be a very good thing if it did.
[01:44:33]  Ed is in West Virginia on our line for independence.
[01:44:35]  Good morning, Ed.
[01:44:38]  Yes.
[01:44:39]  I'm 91 years old.
[01:44:41]  I'm blind.
[01:44:44]  I remember when all this started, 1979.
[01:44:49]  I think I voted for Jimmy Carter because I've been an independent ever since 1956 when I cast my first vote.
[01:44:59]  There's so many questions asked by these people.
[01:45:04]  They call in, and you just don't seem to ever ask them people like a person calls in and says, I'm a Republican.
[01:45:17]  I've been a Republican all my life.
[01:45:20]  How do you know they've been a Republican all their life?
[01:45:25]  This war started in 1979.
[01:45:29]  And if we'd have had eight other presidents that would have had the guts to stand up to Iran, I'm not a Trump fan.
[01:45:39]  I really ain't.
[01:45:41]  But I was so glad that he took this action.
[01:45:46]  And he took it because these people, if you want to wait another 20 years and find out about it, look out your windows.
[01:45:55]  You'll be able to see it.
[01:45:57]  Thank you very much for my time and consideration.
[01:46:05]  Any thoughts you'd like to?
[01:46:06]  Yeah, appreciate that call.
[01:46:07]  Yeah, appreciate that call very much.
[01:46:10]  I agree.
[01:46:11]  There's been a state of war since 1979.
[01:46:13]  Pretty much any time over the last 50 years, especially the beginning there.
[01:46:16]  Someone told you in 1979, you know how this ends?
[01:46:18]  You know how this regime ends?
[01:46:19]  It ends in a war with the great Satan and the little Satan.
[01:46:22]  You wouldn't have been surprised.
[01:46:23]  Or if anyone had told you, oh, you know what, we have a very nationalistic president of the United States who's obsessed with strength and he's bombed Iran, that wouldn't have been a surprise.
[01:46:31]  So I think there's an element of this conflict that was inevitable.
[01:46:36]  Doesn't mean it had to happen three weeks ago.
[01:46:39]  Doesn't mean that everything's been perfect here.
[01:46:41]  Obviously, it hasn't.
[01:46:42]  But eventually, there was going to be this kind of showdown with this regime that actually sought it.
[01:46:48]  You know, it's part of its reason and purpose to have a conflict with what it considers the great Satan.
[01:46:57]  Well, thank you so much for your time.

=== Inevitable Conflict Since 1979 (02:25) ===

[01:46:59]  Rich Lowery, editor and chief of the National Review.
[01:47:02]  Thanks as always for joining us on Washington Journal.
[01:47:06]  Thanks for having me.
[01:47:07]  I enjoyed it.
[01:47:08]  Next up, we have Michael Tomaski, editor of The New Republic, who will also join us to discuss the news of the week, including the ongoing war with Iran.
[01:47:16]  We'll be right back.
[01:47:32]  On C-SPAN's Q&A, three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times photographer Doug Mills reflects on decades covering American politics.
[01:47:41]  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.
[01:47:57]  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.
[01:48:06]  The chart's typically at the end of the speech.
[01:48:09]  And that registered right away with me.
[01:48:11]  And so then when he gestured over towards the chart, that's when the shots rang out.
[01:48:16]  And when he was gesturing, I was, you know, not as close as we are, but maybe four or five feet back.
[01:48:21]  And I had my lens on him.
[01:48:23]  I was trying to get something of he and the flag.
[01:48:25]  And then when he gestured to the rights and the shots rang out, I was actually taking pictures.
[01:48:29]  And then I just kept my finger on the shutter as soon as I heard the bullets.
[01:48:33]  Three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Doug Mills tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's QA.
[01:48:40]  You can listen to QA and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts in a divided media world.
[01:48:50]  One place brings Americans together.
[01:48:53]  According to a new MAGIT research report, nearly 90 million Americans turn to C-SPAN and they're almost perfectly balanced.
[01:49:00]  28% conservative, 27% liberal or progressive, 41% moderate.
[01:49:06]  Republicans watching Democrats, Democrats watching Republicans, moderates watching all sides.
[01:49:12]  Because C-SPAN viewers want the facts straight from the source.
[01:49:16]  No commentary, no agenda, just democracy.
[01:49:20]  Unfiltered every day on the C-SPAN networks.

=== C-SPAN Viewer Demographics and Balance (09:25) ===

[01:49:24]  Washington Journal continues.
[01:49:27]  Welcome back for more analysis on the ongoing war with Iran as well as other political news here in Washington.
[01:49:32]  We're joined now by Michael Tomaski, who's the editor of The New Republic.
[01:49:36]  Welcome back to Washington Journal.
[01:49:38]  Thank you so much.
[01:49:39]  Great to be with you.
[01:49:40]  With all of the developments over the weekend, including those long-range strikes by Iran, as well as the president's threat to potentially strike Iranian power facilities, what's your assessment on the state of the war thus far and what comes next?
[01:49:56]  Well, it's escalating bit by bit, drop by drop.
[01:50:01]  I think Donald Trump expected this to be over by now.
[01:50:04]  I think he thought this was going to be not quite another Venezuela, which took literally two and a half hours.
[01:50:10]  But I think he thought this was going to be just a matter of days, that he would not necessarily topple the regime, but he would weaken the regime in a few days or a couple weeks to such an extent that the people would rise up and find some magical democratic smalte leader.
[01:50:29]  Hasn't happened, isn't going to happen, at least in the foreseeable future.
[01:50:35]  So, you know, we have bit by bit escalation.
[01:50:41]  Closing the straight-of-war moves is, you know, not necessarily an economic stranglehold on the world, but it certainly will raise gas prices as it has.
[01:50:52]  It's going to do something to liquefied natural gas prices, which people have been starting to pay attention to in the last couple of days, which is going to have all kinds of effects on farming and other pursuits.
[01:51:05]  So, you know, it's going to be an economic struggle, I think, for a long time.
[01:51:12]  I think militarily, the United States and Israel have armies that are proficient enough to get done most of what they want to get done.
[01:51:20]  But as far as changing the regime, I think that's a long, long way away.
[01:51:25]  And I think Donald Trump might get bored and lose interest before that happens.
[01:51:29]  And also coming down the pipeline are the midterm elections.
[01:51:32]  And with the impact on gas prices, as well as fertilizer prices and other costs, how do you think this is going to impact the domestic political landscape?
[01:51:44]  Well, midterm elections are a referenda on the incumbent president.
[01:51:48]  That's an old cliché, but it's a cliché because it's true.
[01:51:52]  And, you know, we see in poll after poll after poll what people think right now.
[01:51:57]  Donald Trump's approval ratings are generally around 40%, sometimes a little higher, but often a bit lower.
[01:52:04]  On specific questions like his handling of the economy, he's much lower than that, low 30s, 30% I saw literally the other day in one poll.
[01:52:15]  So people are going to take it out on him.
[01:52:18]  So I think that's pretty much all the Democrats have to say.
[01:52:21]  I do think they should talk also about democracy, about ICE, about these detentions and these extrajudicial moves that the administration is making.
[01:52:33]  That's absolutely part of the story.
[01:52:35]  I think they should also talk about his personal corruption and the meme coin and things like that, that AI-chip deal with the UAE that the Wall Street Journal reported on a couple weeks ago, a couple months ago.
[01:52:49]  All these things are part of the Trump story, and I don't think the Democrats should leave any of them out.
[01:52:55]  I get really annoyed when I hear Democrats debate, should we do this or do this?
[01:52:59]  You can walk and chew gum at the same time, people.
[01:53:02]  But the main story is the economy, is prices, is gas prices, is inflation.
[01:53:08]  Donald Trump promised that he could magically lower prices.
[01:53:12]  Some gullible people believed that.
[01:53:14]  No president can do that, but somehow people believed it.
[01:53:17]  But now they're seeing the truth.
[01:53:19]  And when it comes to the cost of the war itself, the Pentagon has asked, is planning to ask the Congress to approve another $200 billion for the war.
[01:53:29]  What kind of position do you think that puts Democrats in in terms of the argument that we can imagine the White House will make about needing to support the troops versus their opposition to this war?
[01:53:39]  Well, I think potentially it puts Democrats in a pretty strong position politically.
[01:53:45]  The war's not popular.
[01:53:47]  You know, let's just check that basic fact.
[01:53:49]  No poll shows that it has 50% support, sometimes in the high 40s, sometimes in the mid-30s.
[01:53:55]  So it's got about the same popularity that Donald Trump does approval rating.
[01:54:02]  So there's very little political risk for Democrats.
[01:54:05]  Maybe in a few purple districts, I haven't looked at it district by district, but maybe there are a few people who need to be careful about what they say.
[01:54:12]  But generally speaking, the Democrats should just be able to fire away and say, we don't want this war and we're not going to vote a penny for this war.
[01:54:19]  Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee in the House of Representatives, spoke to my colleague at the New Republic, Greg Sargent, the other day for Greg's podcast.
[01:54:30]  And he was very vocal in saying, not a penny.
[01:54:34]  And he doesn't usually talk.
[01:54:36]  He spoke more directly than he's sometimes known for doing.
[01:54:40]  Democrats are also digging in quite a bit on funding for ICE, as you mentioned earlier, and this ongoing partial government shutdown that is starting to affect airports, TSA workers, and as well as others going quite a while now without being paid.
[01:54:56]  What do you think should be the next move for the Democrats in regards to funding for those TSA workers and others under the Department of Homeland Security?
[01:55:05]  I think they should stand pat for the time being.
[01:55:10]  I don't think the Democrats are going to pay any political price for this.
[01:55:13]  I think Trump is going to pay the political price because TSA workers are the government.
[01:55:19]  TSA screeners are the government.
[01:55:21]  Donald Trump's the government.
[01:55:23]  The Democrats aren't the government right now.
[01:55:25]  So I think your average person is just going to say, these people work for Trump.
[01:55:30]  What's happening here as they stand in these long lines?
[01:55:34]  I don't think the Democrats are going to get much blame.
[01:55:36]  So, you know, I don't think the Democrats want chaos in the nation's airports.
[01:55:42]  So, you know, they may cut a deal at some point just to avert that.
[01:55:48]  But I think politically, I don't see a whole lot of risk for them.
[01:55:53]  We're going to be taking questions from Michael Tomaski of the New Republic.
[01:55:57]  Democrats at 202-748-8000.
[01:56:00]  Republicans at 202-748-8001.
[01:56:03]  And Independents at 202-748-8002.
[01:56:08]  I want to ask you, Michael, first about a piece that you wrote for the New Republic.
[01:56:12]  Yes, Trump derangement syndrome exists, but it's among his supporters.
[01:56:17]  And you're talking about that Pearl Harbor comment that he made in the overall office with the Japanese prime minister.
[01:56:24]  Can you explain what you mean here?
[01:56:27]  Well, it was an outrageous thing, the President of the United States, to say in the presence of the Japanese prime minister.
[01:56:36]  It's a very sensitive topic for them.
[01:56:38]  Yes, they did it.
[01:56:40]  Yes, they're culpable, but they have been our allies for 80 years, for gosh sakes.
[01:56:45]  And, you know, we did occupy the country after we nuked them.
[01:56:50]  And I'm not necessarily criticizing that.
[01:56:53]  I realize that the use of those nuclear weapons prevented the war from lasting potentially another year.
[01:56:58]  That's a different debate.
[01:57:00]  But we occupied the country for seven years, but we've been friends for decades and decades and decades.
[01:57:07]  And for a president of the United States to make a stupid, churlish comment like that in the presence of the Japanese prime minister is just offensive.
[01:57:19]  What does that have to do with his supporters?
[01:57:23]  Well, I noticed a lot of people on social media supporting it or laughing it off or saying it wasn't any big, wasn't any kind of big deal.
[01:57:30]  Or people just say that's Trump being Trump.
[01:57:33]  No, I'm sorry.
[01:57:34]  That's not acceptable.
[01:57:35]  The President of the United States represents us, represents all of us on some level.
[01:57:41]  And all presidents, from George W. Bush to Barack Obama to Reagan to Carter in my adult lifetime, have recognized that, that on some level, they represent the people of the United States before the world.
[01:57:56]  He doesn't care about that.
[01:57:58]  He represents himself.
[01:57:59]  He represents the people who suck up to him at Mar-a-Lago and on the golf course.
[01:58:04]  And, you know, we can't, it's horrible that we have a president that behaves that way.
[01:58:11]  And of course, he's already topped that with this incredible thing he said about Robert Mueller 10 minutes after Mueller died.
[01:58:18]  All right.
[01:58:18]  Let's get to your calls.
[01:58:20]  Larry is in Chester, New Hampshire on our line for Democrats.
[01:58:23]  Good morning, Larry.
[01:58:26]  Hello.
[01:58:26]  Thanks for taking my call this morning.
[01:58:30]  I guess I'm on board with you.
[01:58:33]  This TDS Trump derangement syndrome.
[01:58:37]  I mean, I call it Trump delusional syndrome because they have this delusion that he's like this king or like everything he says is okay.
[01:58:47]  Like, oh, it's like you said, Trump being Trump.

=== Trump Delusional Syndrome Explained (11:19) ===

[01:58:50]  But they, they, when they tell things, like when one side says something, and it's both sides, they always leave out stuff.
[01:58:58]  And then the other side takes that stuff and says, look, you know, they're leaving this out or something.
[01:59:03]  So it ends up that no one believes the other side.
[01:59:06]  So, like, how do we even get through this to get people to start like looking at facts?
[01:59:12]  Because no one looks at facts anymore.
[01:59:14]  They use their emotion.
[01:59:16]  And I'm sorry, but the Trump MAGA, they have the story.
[01:59:20]  They control the narrative.
[01:59:21]  Trump just throws so much stuff in there.
[01:59:24]  Even if you wanted to look up stuff, it's hard to keep track of it all.
[01:59:28]  And there's so much information that you really have to look through it.
[01:59:32]  You have to know what the sources are.
[01:59:33]  Like, we need to come out with a better way to be able to give people a picture of what's really happening.
[01:59:40]  What is the left saying that's incorrect?
[01:59:42]  What is the right saying that's incorrect?
[01:59:44]  I mean, I care.
[01:59:45]  Like, I know that we have difference in policies, but when we're making decisions based on incorrect information, we're not going to get anywhere, especially when Trump controls the narrative, which he always seems to do.
[01:59:58]  So that's kind of all I want to say.
[02:00:00]  I don't know how we solve that problem, but they just need to know more information.
[02:00:06]  All right, well, let's let Michael add his thoughts to that.
[02:00:10]  Yeah, the caller describes a very difficult problem in this country that's just gotten worse and worse over the last couple of decades and is only going to get worse.
[02:00:17]  And it's a problem that rests in my mind to a large extent in the shape of our media because we now have, you know, we generally say the media when referring to the press, the fourth estate, but we actually have two medias in this country.
[02:00:34]  We have a mainstream media that consists of the New York Times and, you know, NBC News and we can no longer say CBS News, but ABC and the Associated Press and so on and so on.
[02:00:48]  And then we have an avowedly right-wing media that consists of now CBS.
[02:00:54]  Looks like the Washington Post has joined those ranks.
[02:00:58]  Fox News, of course, Newsmax, One America Network, all the radio stations that you find across the country.
[02:01:06]  And those two media, then is there a left media?
[02:01:10]  Sure.
[02:01:10]  That includes the New Republic magazine.
[02:01:13]  It includes a handful of other magazines and the Huffington Post and some other outlets.
[02:01:19]  But we're quite small compared to both the mainstream media and the right-wing media.
[02:01:26]  So the mainstream media and the right-wing media absolutely do give two different versions of events.
[02:01:33]  And of course, I think the mainstream media is much more accurate.
[02:01:37]  They have flaws and they make mistakes, but the right-wing media is largely a propaganda network for Donald Trump and the Republican Party.
[02:01:45]  And this is a huge problem in this country.
[02:01:48]  And it's why we no longer argue about the same set of facts.
[02:01:52]  Jacques is in Claymont, Delaware, on our line for Independent.
[02:01:55]  Good morning, Jacques.
[02:01:57]  Good morning.
[02:01:58]  Just one thing, you forgot the new media, by the way, which is the podcasts and the YouTube and all that, just as an aside.
[02:02:07]  Right.
[02:02:08]  I called in because it frustrates me, and I'm an independent, it frustrates me to no end that whenever people speak about Iran, they want to go back as far as 1979.
[02:02:23]  Nobody goes back a little further when we put our fingerprint on that country.
[02:02:30]  And the Persians have a long history and they have a long memory.
[02:02:36]  This didn't start in 1979.
[02:02:39]  This started before 1979 when we installed the Shah of Iran.
[02:02:43]  And he put his neck on those people.
[02:02:46]  And ever since then, it's been on with Iran as far as the Persians are concerned.
[02:02:55]  That's where this started.
[02:02:57]  And we like to go right to 1979 and call these people bloodthirsty, and they've killed Americans for this minute.
[02:03:05]  We never go back to the beginning where we stuck our nose in that.
[02:03:10]  That being said, I'm an independent because I don't believe either party really has the American population's interests at heart.
[02:03:21]  The only reason why Donald Trump got elected is because we're a very greedy country.
[02:03:28]  We put riches and economics above decency and above civility.
[02:03:37]  There is quite a few points there.
[02:03:39]  I'm going to let Michael respond.
[02:03:42]  He makes a very important point about Iran.
[02:03:46]  It was 1953, and the United States and the CIA overthrew a sitting elected, democratically elected government in Iran, which was socialist under Mossadegh and was nationalizing the oil fields.
[02:04:02]  And the United States and England didn't like that.
[02:04:05]  So we got him out of there and we installed the Shah.
[02:04:12]  And it was a tragic, tragic mistake.
[02:04:14]  And many people knew it at the time.
[02:04:16]  If you read contemporaneous documents, there was a fierce debate in the Eisenhower administration about the wisdom of that move.
[02:04:24]  But John Foster Dulles wanted to do it, and Eisenhower, of course.
[02:04:29]  And it was a horrible, horrible mistake.
[02:04:31]  And the Shah's regime became more and more and more repressive over time.
[02:04:36]  Ayatollah Khomeini, who came in in 1979 in the Islamic Revolution and took power, was exiled in 1964, maybe, but was a leading, leading opposition figure and living in Paris, but was well known to Iranians.
[02:04:55]  So it's absolutely the case that the extremism of the Shah in this direction sort of led inevitably almost to the extremism of the Ayatollah and his followers in the other direction.
[02:05:10]  So we do bear some responsibility for that without question.
[02:05:15]  His second point is also interesting.
[02:05:20]  And I would just say this very quickly.
[02:05:24]  I'm a liberal.
[02:05:25]  I tend to support the Democratic Party and Democratic candidates.
[02:05:30]  But I recognize ways in which the Democrats haven't really done the job they should be doing of telling working class people we are on your side.
[02:05:42]  And Donald Trump is in some respects better at that rhetorically, not his policies by any stretch of the imagination, but rhetorically, He's a better salesman, and the Democrats have some complications and contradictions there and need to do much better along those lines.
[02:06:02]  I want to follow up on that point because there was a recent NBC News poll that found just 30% of registered voters view the Democratic Party positively compared to 52% who view it negatively.
[02:06:15]  And even within that, 22% of Democrats view their own party unfavorably, with 30% of self-described progressive Democrats holding a negative view.
[02:06:28]  Why do you think there is such a bad opinion of the Democratic Party, even amongst its own base, and what's it going to take to change that?
[02:06:37]  I think a lot of people see the Democrats as not having a real spine and not fighting enough and not really standing for something.
[02:06:51]  I wrote a big long 10,000-word piece about this in the March issue or the April issue, a recent issue of the New Republic, the one before the one that just came out.
[02:07:04]  And I guess it was March.
[02:07:07]  And I talk about this a lot.
[02:07:09]  And I talk about how, you know, the way Donald Trump lets people know that he's on their side, which he's not, it's a fraud, but the way he lets them allegedly know that is that he picks fights in their behalf.
[02:07:23]  And he names names and he calls out enemies.
[02:07:26]  And he says to people, your life is hard.
[02:07:30]  And your life is hard because these people are making it hard.
[02:07:34]  Now, his enemies are, you know, immigrants and transgender people and radical left lunatics like me, I guess, which I'm not.
[02:07:46]  But, you know, he puts things in terms of conflict and tension and fight.
[02:07:54]  And he says, I'm fighting those people on your behalf.
[02:07:58]  And the Democrats don't do that.
[02:08:00]  Most Democrats, some Democrats do.
[02:08:02]  But most Democrats are kind of afraid to do that.
[02:08:05]  Who would Democrats be doing that toward?
[02:08:08]  Well, corporate bad actors who are ripping people off and making their daily lives harder.
[02:08:15]  But a lot of Democrats are just afraid to talk that way.
[02:08:18]  And I could go on and on, but if people are interested in my thoughts on this, they can go look up that very lengthy piece that I wrote.
[02:08:27]  What the Democrats Need to Do Now is the headline, and I go into all this at great length.
[02:08:33]  Speaking of lengthy essays, you also have a new book coming out, as I understand.
[02:08:39]  Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
[02:08:41]  Yes, thank you so much, Kimberly.
[02:08:42]  It's a novel.
[02:08:43]  There it is.
[02:08:45]  Quite an interesting cover.
[02:08:47]  It's called Killing Baby Hitler.
[02:08:49]  It's published by Orr Books.
[02:08:50]  It's coming out in late April.
[02:08:51]  It should be in bookstores by then.
[02:08:53]  It's fiction, my first foray into fiction, although I guess my critics might say otherwise.
[02:08:59]  But it's set in the future, and people discover a group of scientists discovers the secret to time travel, and they decide to send a couple people back to 1889 Austria to try and do what the title suggests.
[02:09:17]  And, you know, I'm not going to give it away from there, but hijinks ensue, let's just say.
[02:09:23]  But my friends who've read it tell me it's very funny, but also, I'm happy to hear them say it has some insights about our current political and social situation that we're living in here in the United States and around the world.
[02:09:39]  So, I try to combine a lot of things that I've read and thought about over the years and put them into a work of fiction that I think is I hope people will find enlightening.
[02:09:53]  But also, it's just entertaining.
[02:09:55]  People tell me it's a good page turner.
[02:09:58]  Well, let's get back to the nonfiction aspect of American politics and international affairs.
[02:10:03]  Let's hear a question from Dave in Frederick, Maryland on our line for Democrats.
[02:10:07]  Good morning, Dave.

=== Social Media vs Traditional News (07:11) ===

[02:10:09]  Yeah, I mean, you were speaking about, you know, media, CBS, et cetera, but you didn't say anything about social media and the type of conspiracy theories they could put out.
[02:10:23]  I mean, Trump has an influencer, Laura Loomer, in the White House.
[02:10:28]  I mean, that's really important.
[02:10:30]  And young people use social media, and they get a lot of their news through social media.
[02:10:36]  And much of it is not true.
[02:10:39]  And it just excuse how people think about certain things, especially younger people.
[02:10:44]  What do you think about that?
[02:10:46]  100%.
[02:10:47]  You're totally right.
[02:10:48]  That was a bad oversight on my part.
[02:10:51]  Social media is probably more important than traditional media at this point.
[02:10:55]  If you include podcasts and podcasters like Joe Rogan, who undoubtedly influenced more votes than the New York Times editorial page in 2024.
[02:11:06]  And then, yeah, TikTok, you know, and people get their news in 30 or 45-second bits.
[02:11:13]  And then, you know, X, formerly Twitter, Blue Sky, and those other platforms where outrageousness is often rewarded.
[02:11:25]  And on X now, just like plain old, you know, racism quite often.
[02:11:31]  So, yeah, these things have had a really toxic, well, not everything.
[02:11:36]  I mean, podcasts can be very useful, I guess.
[02:11:39]  There are a lot of good podcasts out there, but social media has been really toxic.
[02:11:44]  And, you know, what to do about it.
[02:11:47]  You know, there's this Section 230, I'm sure the caller knows what I'm referring to, that holds tech firms harmless from things that are said on their platforms.
[02:11:58]  And there's a lot of talk about ways to reform Section 230 that would rein some of this in.
[02:12:05]  And, you know, that's one possible solution.
[02:12:07]  But, you know, it's really a bad, bad problem.
[02:12:12]  And it's a toothpaste that we can't put back in the tube.
[02:12:16]  I want to ask you about some developing news.
[02:12:19]  In an interview with CNN, White House Borders are Tom Holman has said, echoing what the president threatened, that the administration would be deploying ICE to U.S. airports.
[02:12:29]  And I want to get your thoughts on that related to what we were discussing earlier about the suspended funding for TSA.
[02:12:39]  Well, I wonder what the need for that is.
[02:12:45]  So I'd like to know a little bit more about it.
[02:12:49]  But, you know, this is also, I don't know what Holman and Trump think this is going to show the American people.
[02:13:00]  What exactly, what muscle are they flexing here?
[02:13:03]  I don't think this is going to be very popular.
[02:13:05]  ICE isn't popular.
[02:13:07]  Again, we return to polls.
[02:13:12]  Trump isn't popular.
[02:13:13]  The war isn't popular.
[02:13:15]  ICE isn't popular.
[02:13:16]  What ICE is doing isn't popular.
[02:13:18]  It's, in fact, extremely unpopular.
[02:13:21]  So now they're going to be in airports.
[02:13:24]  I don't know.
[02:13:24]  I'll go read about it, Kimberly, but I don't get it.
[02:13:27]  Richard is in Louisville, Kentucky on our line for Republicans.
[02:13:30]  Good morning, Richard.
[02:13:32]  Yes, there are so many things.
[02:13:36]  First off, I'm going to try to stay within the decade of things that have happened in this country and around the world.
[02:13:46]  The Ayatollah Khomeini, only after he's killed thousands, they say over 30,000 in Iran.
[02:13:55]  You didn't mention that, Mr. Tomaski.
[02:13:58]  It's almost as if you would agree with that.
[02:14:01]  But I understand.
[02:14:02]  I read up briefly on the new.
[02:14:06]  Hello.
[02:14:06]  Yes, we can hear you.
[02:14:08]  Okay, I'm sorry.
[02:14:11]  I've read up on the new Republic and found that you're not just left-leaning.
[02:14:15]  You're pretty far over there.
[02:14:17]  But you know, hey, I don't have to read you.
[02:14:18]  See, and that's the thing about America.
[02:14:20]  The same thing with X. All the crazies that come on there, I can just flip on through them.
[02:14:28]  Just keep on going.
[02:14:29]  And that's what's great about American and, you know, right to free speech.
[02:14:34]  You don't have to read all that stuff.
[02:14:36]  And anybody with a half a brain wouldn't see that this is just garbage.
[02:14:41]  But as far as 20 billion going to the military, that they need some extra money, absolutely.
[02:14:48]  Those and those going into Minnesota to find the fraud, the money that's going to be taken back.
[02:14:56]  Now we're in California.
[02:14:57]  Have you seen California?
[02:14:59]  All the money that's been stolen from taxpayers?
[02:15:02]  And oh, by the way, you mentioned some polls earlier.
[02:15:05]  I think if you looked at Republican and megapolls, we are behind Donald John Trump as President of the United States.
[02:15:12]  Hey, you have a great day.
[02:15:16]  Oh, I know that.
[02:15:17]  I mean, there was a poll last week from NBC that showed Trump's support among self-identified MA people, which is not the same as Republicans, but self-identified MAGA people, is literally 100%.
[02:15:31]  So I don't have any doubt about that.
[02:15:32]  Now, his support among Republicans, you know, at any given time, a president's support in their own party should be 90 or 88.
[02:15:44]  I've seen polls where Trump's in the low 80s, and that's a little bit of trouble for him.
[02:15:51]  But granted, I won't really take issue with the caller.
[02:15:54]  And he said a number of things that I disagree with, including his assessment of the politics of the new Republic.
[02:16:00]  But I'll grant him this point.
[02:16:03]  I have no brief for the Iranian regime whatsoever, sir.
[02:16:06]  None whatsoever.
[02:16:08]  Brutal, awful regime.
[02:16:10]  I'd like to see them toppled.
[02:16:12]  I'd actually, you know, I'm not, as you can tell, no fan of Donald Trump, but I'd actually like to see this succeed in the way that he dreams about and for Iran to become a democratic republic.
[02:16:25]  It's a great country with many great, great history and great traditions.
[02:16:31]  So, you know, I'd love to see that happen.
[02:16:34]  And I despise this regime.
[02:16:36]  You know, but there are also very legitimate questions about the wisdom of this and the costs of it.
[02:16:43]  Bob is in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina on our line for independence.
[02:16:48]  Good morning, Bob.
[02:16:51]  Good morning.
[02:16:52]  How are you?
[02:16:53]  Doing well, thanks.
[02:16:54]  What's your question for Michael Tomaski?
[02:16:56]  Okay, I have a question that kind of confuses me.
[02:17:01]  And this is the business of nuclear weapons.
[02:17:05]  When we say we don't want nations to get nuclear weapons, we know there are nations that have them.
[02:17:14]  Some of them are our allies, but some of them are our adversaries.

=== Nuclear Weapons and Deterrence Risks (03:14) ===

[02:17:21]  And my understanding about a nuclear weapon is it had ultimate devastations.
[02:17:28]  My understanding, you can't targetly drop this like you do other bombs because of its enormous destructive power.
[02:17:38]  In other words, when you drop a nuclear weapon, my understanding is you have endangered your own nation, your own people, just as much as the people you targeted it at.
[02:17:51]  Or am I misunderstanding the devastation of this weapon?
[02:17:57]  And if it is that way, and nations have them, particularly our adversaries, may they simply want them not for offensive purpose, but simply for deterrence to protect themselves.
[02:18:15]  That's my question.
[02:18:16]  Thank you.
[02:18:18]  Yeah, a lot of interesting points.
[02:18:22]  The bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima by the United States in 1945 was 15 kilotons, and it killed a few hundred thousand people.
[02:18:35]  Well, I can't remember the exact numbers, but maybe around 100,000 instantly and then a few hundred thousand more over time.
[02:18:45]  And, of course, much more illness and sickness and devastation than that.
[02:18:51]  Nuclear weapons today, they come smaller, but a lot of them are much, much bigger.
[02:18:56]  So the devastation could be much, much greater.
[02:18:59]  That's certainly true.
[02:19:01]  There's a concept from the Cold War that the caller may be familiar with called mutual assured destruction, the thinking of which was that, you know, if the United States or the Soviet Union launched a first strike, a first nuclear strike, the other country would have no choice but to retaliate and therefore mad, mutual assured destruction.
[02:19:22]  And this was the reason it was posited that neither would really use nuclear weapons.
[02:19:29]  And so it's generally held true.
[02:19:31]  I mean, it has held true.
[02:19:32]  Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the only nuclear bombs ever dropped in world history.
[02:19:39]  So it has held true that countries with nuclear power don't use them.
[02:19:44]  They just exist for deterrence sake.
[02:19:47]  And countries want to join that club because they think once they have one, then the United States or Russia or whomever won't attack them.
[02:19:58]  And that has generally held true.
[02:20:03]  There have been wars between countries with nuclear powers.
[02:20:06]  India and Pakistan both have nukes and they have had some skirmishes over the years.
[02:20:10]  But generally speaking, nuclear deterrence has worked.
[02:20:17]  We have a question we received via text from Melody in Pratt, Kansas, who asks, what are the chances that Trump's new task force force on waste and fraud will look closely at the Defense Department?
[02:20:33]  Zero.

=== Defense Department Waste Task Force (09:57) ===

[02:20:35]  He proposes raising the Pentagon's budget to $1.5 trillion.
[02:20:43]  It's just under a trillion now.
[02:20:45]  So there's a massive, massive increase.
[02:20:50]  And, you know, it's just a bonanza for defense contractors.
[02:20:53]  You know, we don't need to spend that kind of money.
[02:20:56]  We don't need to spend what we're spending right now.
[02:21:00]  I'm not some peacenick who thinks, you know, eliminate the Defense Department.
[02:21:04]  No, no, we need a Defense Department.
[02:21:06]  We need modern sophisticated weaponry.
[02:21:10]  So we need to spend sufficiently on that.
[02:21:14]  But a trillion and a half dollars and The monies that are being cut out of domestic programs, the firings that are going on at places like the Environmental Protection Agency and other places like that, and the things that DOSH did, it's really a very, very warped set of priorities.
[02:21:38]  Earl is in Canton, Georgia, on our line for Democrats.
[02:21:41]  Good morning, Earl.
[02:21:43]  Okay.
[02:21:45]  Okay, I was calling about the war.
[02:21:47]  I was drafted in June of 1969 for Nixon's Vietnam.
[02:21:53]  Okay, I didn't go to Vietnam, ended up in Germany.
[02:21:56]  And I was there.
[02:21:57]  It was in 71 March, I think.
[02:22:00]  The airborne troops came through with the Vav Oak Show, what I got to see.
[02:22:04]  I was proud of it.
[02:22:06]  They were headed to Hanoi or the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
[02:22:10]  But they got there.
[02:22:11]  There was 5,000 or 10,000 troops.
[02:22:13]  They dropped in there and there was nothing there.
[02:22:16]  This is the same thing Trump's doing now.
[02:22:19]  They drop them in there, nothing's there.
[02:22:21]  So here we go again in another war for nothing.
[02:22:26]  That's my opinion.
[02:22:28]  I'm sorry that I feel that way, but that's just the way it is.
[02:22:33]  Why be sorry?
[02:22:34]  I mean, if that's how you feel, that's how you feel.
[02:22:37]  And, you know, I wouldn't necessarily compare this to Vietnam yet.
[02:22:44]  I mean, you know, Vietnam was a different situation.
[02:22:48]  It was a country that had been ruled by France, and there was an uprising.
[02:22:56]  And incidentally, Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the Vietnamese uprising against French colonialism, originally wrote to the United States, to Secretary of State Dean Acheson in 1947, asking for our help.
[02:23:12]  And Acheson and Truman said no.
[02:23:15]  And only then did he turn to Moscow.
[02:23:20]  Another sad mistake, probably, certainly, in our history.
[02:23:26]  So you had a war of independence there that was very far along, really, by the time the United States got involved in 1965 in a deep way.
[02:23:36]  And you don't have that situation in Iran.
[02:23:39]  So they are different situations.
[02:23:41]  But as I said at the very top of my segment, Kimberly, drip, drip, you know, we're slowly, slowly escalating, talking about ground troops, talking about the bombing power plants and other facilities if Iran doesn't reopen the strait.
[02:24:01]  So as I said at the beginning, Trump thought this was going to be over in a week or two.
[02:24:07]  It's much more complicated than that, and we don't know where it's going to go.
[02:24:12]  Next up is Mark in Bedford, Indiana on our line for Republicans.
[02:24:16]  Good morning, Mark.
[02:24:18]  Yes, thank you for taking my call.
[02:24:20]  My concern is gas prices.
[02:24:22]  Trump, when he first took the Oval Office, he signed in a bill, Drill, Baby, Drill.
[02:24:27]  And I thought we weren't going to be dependent on foreign oil and gas and stuff.
[02:24:32]  I thought the United States could make cleaner, better fuel like gas, oil, LP, and natural gas.
[02:24:39]  And I'm kind of concerned that the prices keep going up instead of going their direction because I really thought we weren't dependent on foreign oil any longer.
[02:24:46]  So maybe you can help me with that thought about why our gas prices keep going up when we should be producing our own oil and our own gas and our own natural gas and LP.
[02:24:57]  And thank you for your time and taking my question.
[02:25:00]  Thank you.
[02:25:02]  You know, it's been a while since I've looked into this.
[02:25:05]  So I admit I'm not an expert on the oil industry, but the United States is the world's largest producer of oil.
[02:25:14]  But other countries have more reserves.
[02:25:17]  Venezuela actually has the largest oil reserves, known oil reserves in the country, in the world.
[02:25:24]  But, you know, the United States can't unilaterally set prices.
[02:25:27]  You know, the prices are set by a whole combination of factors that have to do with production in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and Iran and Venezuela and Mexico and the United States and other countries.
[02:25:41]  And those countries adjust their policies trying to influence price.
[02:25:45]  So in other words, a president can't set oil prices.
[02:25:50]  It's preposterous.
[02:25:52]  It stuns me that anybody believed that, frankly, when he was saying that on the campaign trail.
[02:25:59]  And so we're seeing now that prices go up when something like this happens.
[02:26:04]  And even when prices go, you know, he brags sometimes that he got gas under $2 a gallon.
[02:26:10]  And I see Trump fans repeat that on social media.
[02:26:13]  Well, that was during the pandemic.
[02:26:16]  Everything was depressed.
[02:26:18]  Millions lost their jobs.
[02:26:19]  Millions of businesses were going out of business.
[02:26:22]  The economy was in negative territory.
[02:26:25]  So of course gas prices went down.
[02:26:27]  And now he brags about it as if it's something he did.
[02:26:29]  It's ridiculous.
[02:26:31]  I'll mention that right now, according to AAA, the average price of a gallon of gas is $3.92 and has been going up.
[02:26:41]  In some parts of the country, it's as high as over $5 a gallon.
[02:26:45]  Mark is in Damascus, Maryland, on our line for independence.
[02:26:49]  Good morning, Mark.
[02:26:52]  Hello.
[02:26:52]  Thank you for taking my call.
[02:26:55]  Go ahead with your question.
[02:26:58]  I'd like to address the issue of the media that was brought up a little while ago.
[02:27:05]  And I would like to say that we do not have anything that resembles independence in our mainstream media anymore.
[02:27:17]  And it's not even worthwhile to pay attention to it at this point.
[02:27:23]  Amy Goodman wrote an excellent book regarding the media, which is now state-controlled media, basically.
[02:27:31]  And she laid out all of the reasons why it has become that.
[02:27:44]  What is basically the state-controlled media is now, oh, and by the way, I'd like to agree with your current host or your current guest and disagree wholeheartedly with your previous guest.
[02:28:02]  And I'd like, with regard to the media, I'd like to say the media allows the kind of rhetoric that he skews.
[02:28:11]  For instance, the previous guest described Iran as a religious extremist theology and a threat.
[02:28:25]  He used language such as they are a blight on the region.
[02:28:31]  This is the kind of thing that's allowed on state-controlled media.
[02:28:37]  And did you have a specific question for our current guest?
[02:28:42]  Well, maybe he can address the fact that no one has brought up the fact that there is only one state that is going to benefit from this war that we are entering, which is Israel, and no one has spoken about Israel, which is...
[02:29:01]  All right, well, let's let our guests respond.
[02:29:05]  Yeah, There's no question that Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has wanted a United States president to be a partner in a project like this for some time.
[02:29:22]  Regime change in Iran.
[02:29:24]  And he found it finally in Donald Trump.
[02:29:28]  And, you know, I assume that he helped talk Trump into this in some way, but Trump's his own man.
[02:29:36]  Trump has free will.
[02:29:38]  You know, he's a grown adult.
[02:29:39]  He can decide.
[02:29:40]  He can make decisions.
[02:29:41]  So it's, I don't, you know, like blame Netanyahu for what Trump did.
[02:29:46]  I blame Trump for what Trump did.
[02:29:48]  I see them, though, like they may be at odds here as we go down this road because I think Netanyahu is very committed to regime change.
[02:30:00]  And I don't think Trump is.
[02:30:01]  I think if Trump sees that this is going badly and really hurting his numbers, I think he'll just cut and run.
[02:30:10]  So, you know, they may be, they may diverge here at some point.
[02:30:15]  Well, that's all the time we have for this segment.
[02:30:17]  Thank you so much to Michael Tomaski, who is the editor of The New Republic.
[02:30:22]  Really appreciate your time this morning.
[02:30:24]  Thanks so much.
[02:30:25]  I'm grateful to be on.
[02:30:26]  And we are grateful for all of our callers as well.
[02:30:29]  And we are coming up next, going to have a segment of Open Forum.

=== Student Documentary Competition Winners (02:51) ===

[02:30:33]  You can start calling in now, Democrats at 202-748-8000, Republicans at 202-748-8001.
[02:30:41]  And Independents at 202-748-8002.
[02:30:45]  We'll be right back.
[02:30:55]  Lights, cameras, impact.
[02:30:58]  To celebrate the 250th anniversary since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, thousands of students across America started writing and filming for this year's C-SPAN Student Cam documentary competition.
[02:31:09]  Nearly 4,000 students from 38 states and Washington, D.C. created documentaries examining themes from American history, exploring rights and freedoms rooted in the foundational document, or tackling modern-day issues from the economy to immigration, criminal justice, education, and healthcare.
[02:31:27]  They researched, they interviewed experts, and they told powerful stories, exploring the enduring impact of the Declaration of Independence.
[02:31:36]  And now it's time to announce the top winners of Student Cam 2026.
[02:31:41]  The middle school first prize goes to Harper Hayden and Helena De La Hussé of Correa Middle School in San Diego, California.
[02:31:49]  Their documentary, This Is What Democracy Looks Like, about free speech and the No Kings movement.
[02:31:54]  The High School Eastern Division first prize goes to Kessler Dickerson and Charlotte Liggin from Millbrook Magnet High School in Raleigh, North Carolina for Roots of Freedom, the struggles and tensions of rural American agriculture, about farmers and government policies that impact food production.
[02:32:11]  In the high school Central Division, Benjamin Curian of Olmin Tangi Liberty High School in Powell, Ohio won first prize for A Right to Health about healthcare policy.
[02:32:20]  And in the high school Western Division, first prize goes to Danaya Safi and Juhi Fari from Indercom High School in Sacramento, California for Dreamers Deferred, the American Dream on Hold about immigration policy and deferred action for childhood arrivals.
[02:32:35]  And we're happy to announce that Student Cam 2026 Grand Prize winner earning $5,000 is Irena Holbrook from Troy Athens High School in Troy, Michigan for her documentary, The Pursuit of Fair Pay, about the impact of name, image, and likeness, known as NIL, on college sports.
[02:32:53]  And out of almost 4,000 students who participated this year, you've won $5,000 on this year's grand prize.
[02:32:59]  Congratulations.
[02:33:01]  Thank you.
[02:33:02]  Want to see their amazing films?
[02:33:04]  Watch all 150 award-winning documentaries at studentcam.org and catch the top 21 winners airing this April on C-SPAN.
[02:33:13]  C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered.
[02:33:19]  Washington Journal continues.
[02:33:21]  Welcome back.
[02:33:22]  We're in an open forum ready to take your calls.

=== Robert Mueller Investigation Comments (03:16) ===

[02:33:25]  But first, news this weekend that former FBI director Robert Mueller has died.
[02:33:30]  Here's a portion of his obituary from the New York Times identifying that he rebuilt the FBI and led the Trump inquiry, imposing the most significant overhaul of the FBI in its history.
[02:33:43]  And then later, after concluding that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election, he became a target of the president's anger.
[02:33:53]  We have a portion of former Director Mueller's comments in 2019 where he actually gave statements on the investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.
[02:34:06]  Here's some of what he said at the time.
[02:34:09]  I'll make a few remarks about the results of our work.
[02:34:14]  But beyond these few remarks, it is important that the office's written work speak for itself.
[02:34:21]  Let me begin where the appointment order begins, and that is interference in the 2016 presidential election.
[02:34:30]  As alleged by the grand jury in an indictment, Russian intelligence officers who were part of the Russian military launched a concerted attack on our political system.
[02:34:42]  The indictment alleges that they used sophisticated cyber techniques to hack into computers and networks used by the Clinton campaign.
[02:34:51]  They stole private information and then released that information through fake online identities and through the organization Wikileaks.
[02:35:01]  The releases were designed and timed to interfere with our election and to damage a presidential candidate.
[02:35:10]  And at the same time as the grand jury alleged in a separate indictment, a private Russian entity engaged in a social media operation where Russian citizens posed as Americans in order to influence an election.
[02:35:27]  These indictments contain allegations, and we are not commenting on the guilt or the innocence of any specific defendant.
[02:35:36]  Every defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
[02:35:42]  The indictments allege and the other activities in our report describe efforts to interfere in our political system.
[02:35:50]  They needed to be investigated and understood, and that is among the reasons why the Department of Justice established our office.
[02:35:59]  That is also a reason we investigated efforts to obstruct the investigation.
[02:36:05]  The matters we investigated were of paramount importance.
[02:36:09]  It was critical for us to obtain full and accurate information from every person we questioned.
[02:36:15]  When a subject of an investigation obstructs that investigation or lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of their government's effort to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable.
[02:36:30]  A portion of the work of former FBI Director Robert Mueller, who died this weekend at 81.
[02:36:36]  Let's get to your calls in open forum.
[02:36:38]  Richard is in California on our line for Democrats.

=== Polling Issues with Cell Phones (13:31) ===

[02:36:41]  Good morning, Richard.
[02:36:43]  Oh, thank you so much.
[02:36:44]  Pardon me, coffee.
[02:36:46]  Washington Journal.
[02:36:47]  I would comment first about your hired guest, Mr. Tomoski, killing baby Hitler.
[02:36:54]  There were books like that back in the 60s, late 60s, Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, kind of a farce on the government situation, I think.
[02:37:02]  So bless his heart.
[02:37:04]  Robert Mueller made me so sad.
[02:37:06]  And to hear a certain person say, I'm glad he's dead, made me puke.
[02:37:10]  God, that's just really bad.
[02:37:12]  But also, I want to make a point.
[02:37:14]  So, Richard, I'll pause here.
[02:37:16]  You're referencing a post that the president made on Truth Social where he said, Robert Mueller just died.
[02:37:23]  Good.
[02:37:23]  I'm glad he's dead.
[02:37:25]  He can no longer hurt innocent people.
[02:37:29]  Yeah, that's just terrible.
[02:37:31]  What a statement.
[02:37:33]  There's approximately 35 million Shia religious people in Iran.
[02:37:38]  35 million is a big number.
[02:37:40]  The Shia religion is a religion of martyrdom against unjust causes.
[02:37:45]  And if Donald Trump thinks he's going to be able to land a couple thousand Marines to fight 35 million Shia people who are willing to die for their belief, he's going to get a big surprise.
[02:37:56]  It's going to be like, is he going to next going to decide he's going to nuke Iran like the Americans did when they decided they couldn't fight the Japanese on the land?
[02:38:04]  So they nuked them instead because everybody in Japan had at least a knife and a fork to fight with.
[02:38:09]  Everybody.
[02:38:10]  They were not going to give up, and that's why they got nuked.
[02:38:13]  So they didn't want any more losses to the Japanese.
[02:38:16]  And now, what's going to happen in Iran?
[02:38:18]  This is just a horrible situation.
[02:38:20]  That's my whole statement.
[02:38:21]  Thank you for your time.
[02:38:23]  I'll point out that this weekend on C-SPAN ceasefire, we're going to hear from Vermont Senator Peter Welch and Louisiana Senator John Kennedy.
[02:38:31]  They joined host Dasha Burns for a bipartisan dialogue on the Iran war, as well as Homeland Security Department's partial shutdown and the Senate action on the Trump-backed voter ID bill, the Save America Act.
[02:38:45]  You can watch that immediately after Washington Journal today at 10 a.m. Eastern here on C-SPAN.
[02:38:51]  Back to your calls.
[02:38:52]  Keith is in Palm Bay, Florida on our line for Republicans.
[02:38:56]  Good morning, Keith.
[02:38:57]  Hey, good morning, and thank you for taking my call.
[02:39:01]  Just to answer that, one guy's quite, I don't believe in 3,500 Marines are going to invade the mainland.
[02:39:10]  I think it's a ploy to take over Cog Island where all their oil is distributed from.
[02:39:16]  And the blockade, if the blockade doesn't work, they'll probably put the Marines in there to take over the island totally so the Iranians can't gain money from oil and stuff.
[02:39:27]  And by the way, the oil on the sea that he's allowing to be sold, oil is paid when they fill up the ship.
[02:39:36]  It's a customer that it's going to be allowed to get their oil that's already paid for.
[02:39:42]  The Iranians already got the money for that oil.
[02:39:44]  It's the people waiting on the oil that they're allowing them ships to go to.
[02:39:49]  The same with the Russian ships.
[02:39:51]  It's ships that are already on the sea.
[02:39:54]  Okay, what I called about, though, was you had a little conversation about the polling about the 355 million and how many people would represent in a poll and stuff to be accurate.
[02:40:07]  If I'm not mistaken, the last three or four, especially 2016, most important polls, presidential, were off.
[02:40:17]  They were way off.
[02:40:19]  The polling since the cell phones have not been accurate at all.
[02:40:23]  For one thing, illegal aliens could even be getting polled during these polls, and people lie on these polls.
[02:40:30]  So why do no matter how many people, unless you're having a vote, literal vote is the only poll that counts to me.
[02:40:39]  They're meaningless to put up these polls.
[02:40:42]  They're just making money and trying to direct people in the agenda because polls, I mean, if you can't be accurate on the presidential poll, why are these daily polls being accepted as accurate?
[02:40:55]  Okay, now also getting to Iran.
[02:40:58]  I wanted to let you get to your point on Iran, but the issues that you've raised with polling are definitely well sorted out and reported on about the cell phones causing problems with polling, about people lying in polls.
[02:41:11]  I wonder, Keith, what you think would be a good way to track public opinion in a way that's informative, if not polling, given all the flaws that are known about it.
[02:41:22]  Only elections can be people that are, you call somebody off the spot and they're going to be polled.
[02:41:31]  They could say whatever and change their mind two seconds after they hang up the phone.
[02:41:35]  I mean, this polling stuff is sort of, to me, it's a waste of money and a waste of time.
[02:41:42]  I don't believe the polls.
[02:41:44]  I mean, now when they had landlines and you were calling an actual American family's house to take a poll.
[02:41:52]  Now they could still lie, you know, on the poll, but at least those were way more accurate back then.
[02:41:59]  As soon as we went to the cell phones, it's been totally off, unaccurate.
[02:42:04]  And I just, I don't believe them.
[02:42:06]  How you can poll 3,500 people and say that 355 million people are thinking that way is beyond me.
[02:42:16]  You know, because then 3,500 people think that way, you're saying that statistics say that all the country feels that way.
[02:42:24]  And it just, I mean, I was in math class too in statistics, and I just, I don't, I don't go for it anymore since the cell phone, especially.
[02:42:32]  Iran, you know, we have a flight of pink code going down to Cuba standing up for communism and stuff.
[02:42:42]  But they won't protest.
[02:42:48]  You know, the Gaza people won't protest against Iran killing 30,000 of their people.
[02:42:54]  Their women still get circumcised.
[02:42:58]  They can't even go out in public without a full covering of their body.
[02:43:05]  They have to have a man with them.
[02:43:07]  And these are laws.
[02:43:09]  Their husbands can abuse them.
[02:43:12]  They can rape them.
[02:43:14]  If a girl is raped, she's stoned to death, buried up to her head and stoned to death.
[02:43:20]  They hang in wrestlers.
[02:43:23]  And we have no protest standing up for these women and these vulgar ways of this nation.
[02:43:30]  So, Keith, I do want to follow up on some of the points you raised related to Cuba in particular, although I did hear your points on Iran, but you referenced the group of Code Pink going down to Cuba.
[02:43:45]  So some context for that.
[02:43:47]  Just in the last 24 hours, a national blackout has hit Cuba for the second time in a week.
[02:43:54]  More than 10 million people, this is reporting in the BBC, have had power cut to their homes and businesses across Cuba after the country's national electrical grid collapsed for the second time in a week.
[02:44:07]  And Cuba's grid operator, so it's gradually recovering electricity.
[02:44:11]  But the Caribbean country has suffered three major blackouts this month as a U.S. fuel blockade cut off foreign oil imports required to keep power stations running.
[02:44:23]  Now, what our caller was referencing is a trip by a group Code Pink as well as other groups.
[02:44:29]  Here it is on their website.
[02:44:31]  They call it Breaking the Blockade by Air, by Sea, by Land.
[02:44:36]  A growing coalition of international organizations, including Progressive International, the People's Forum, CodePink, and allied movements across the Americas and beyond is coming together to converge in Havana on March 21st to deliver humanitarian aid to Cuba.
[02:44:52]  And there have been multiple images of this trip happening, and that's what our caller was referencing.
[02:44:58]  Let's hear now from Mike in Valley Center, California on our line for independence.
[02:45:02]  Good morning, Mike.
[02:45:04]  Hi, thanks for taking my call.
[02:45:06]  I'm concerned about the safety of our troops that we're probably going to send onto the ground in Ukraine.
[02:45:18]  I'm afraid that the troops and the ships that deploy the troops.
[02:45:22]  Mike, just to be clear, are you talking about American troops being deployed in Ukraine or potentially in Iran?
[02:45:29]  In Iran.
[02:45:30]  Okay, go ahead.
[02:45:31]  Yeah, and I'm concerned that the ships and the troops could be attacked by swarms of drones and missiles.
[02:45:39]  You know, the Iranians aren't stupid people.
[02:45:43]  They probably have been holding back, you know, quite a bit of their armaments for a situation like this.
[02:45:50]  And I think the Iranian army, instead of starting a frontal attack, they could probably hide behind the Iranian people and just fire drones at our troops.
[02:46:07]  I know Russia is supplying targeting intel to Iran.
[02:46:14]  And in the war in Afghanistan, Russia had bounties on our troops.
[02:46:21]  I think when Trump and Israel are launching these attacks, they need to protect the oil and natural gas infrastructure in both Iran and its neighbors, only because this can be a long time before everything's back to normal.
[02:46:44]  So these prices are going to be crazy for a while.
[02:46:48]  The only way to open the strait, I think, is with troops on the ground.
[02:46:52]  So I think it could be a real bad situation if we're not careful.
[02:46:57]  I think Trump's painted himself into a corner, and we should send Tomhawk missiles to Ukraine.
[02:47:04]  Thank you.
[02:47:06]  So there has been reporting in the past couple of days about additional troop movements to the region.
[02:47:12]  Here's some in military.com from two days ago that the U.S. sends another 2,500 Marines to Iran as the ground option emerges in the war.
[02:47:23]  Thousands of Marines are heading to the Middle East as the United States weighs whether to deepen its role in Iran as part of a military buildup, leading to more questions about possible ground troops or missions tied to the Strait of Hormuz.
[02:47:37]  About 2,500 Marines are deploying with additional warships as the conflict enters a more dangerous phase, according to reports Friday from Reuters and the Associated Press, citing U.S. officials.
[02:47:50]  Military.com reached out to comment for comment from multiple agencies as well.
[02:47:56]  Belinda is in Black Shear, Georgia on our line for Democrats.
[02:48:00]  Good morning, Belinda.
[02:48:02]  Good morning.
[02:48:05]  I really, I have so many questions, but I'm more full of concerns.
[02:48:12]  I'm concerned for this country.
[02:48:14]  I'm concerned for our troops.
[02:48:17]  I'm concerned for us elderly, sick people.
[02:48:21]  And I watched on CSTAN a while back or on here a hearing on Biden's competency when he was a president and he was not even a president.
[02:48:33]  How much longer are people going to allow this man who is clearly unhinged to do what he's doing when the majority of what he's doing is coming from the people around him because clearly he doesn't know whether he's coming or going?
[02:48:50]  And I was at the first No Kings rally in Brunswick and I'm going to be at the next one.
[02:48:57]  But somebody's got to, at some point, why won't people stand up and say, hey, this man is not in his right state of mind.
[02:49:05]  He's putting our troops in danger.
[02:49:08]  The people that work on these ships are merchant marines.
[02:49:12]  They're not people from other countries.
[02:49:14]  They're at risk.
[02:49:16]  And I mean, what are we supposed to do now?
[02:49:20]  Because now we're going to have Russia, China, and North Korea all against us.
[02:49:26]  We've made enemies with all of our allies, and we've cuddled up to the enemies.
[02:49:32]  What are we supposed to do as Americans?
[02:49:34]  Because I'm very frightened.
[02:49:36]  And I don't know what to do.
[02:49:39]  It's not good, and nobody will stand up for us and do something.
[02:49:43]  It's like I'm just watching everything that I've seen all my life.
[02:49:48]  He's destroyed the United States.
[02:49:51]  They've destroyed everything that is good.
[02:49:53]  Every safety net, every safety factor is gone.
[02:49:58]  So what happens next?
[02:50:01]  What are we, you know, what are we waiting for?
[02:50:04]  Because none of this is ever going to be fixed or repaired.
[02:50:08]  There's not enough time.
[02:50:09]  The divide is far too much.

=== Communist Party Influence in Iran (03:49) ===

[02:50:13]  I have friends who are Trumpers, and to be quite honest, they have a hatred to anybody who doesn't believe or think like Trump.
[02:50:24]  They literally have feelings of animosity and hatred to us because we don't believe the lies.
[02:50:32]  We know the truth.
[02:50:33]  We know better.
[02:50:35]  I mean, this is something that's going to go on forever.
[02:50:38]  The hate, the division, and the violence has only just begun in this country.
[02:50:44]  And I'm very frightened.
[02:50:46]  And what are we supposed to do?
[02:50:49]  Tara is in Los Angeles, California, on our line for Republicans.
[02:50:54]  Good morning, Tara.
[02:50:55]  Yes, good morning.
[02:50:56]  Thank you for taking my call.
[02:51:00]  In the previous segment, a reference was made to regime change in Iran in 1953 by the CIA.
[02:51:12]  I want to point out that it was during the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States were locked into a conflict.
[02:51:22]  The goal was to stop the spread of communism.
[02:51:27]  Iran had a very strong, powerful communist party.
[02:51:34]  I was there.
[02:51:36]  The Communist Party of Iran was poised to take over the country.
[02:51:43]  Premier Mossadegh would have been overthrown in a matter of few months.
[02:51:51]  The Shah had been in power prior to the election of Mossadegh, and he was just brought back and not installed by the CIA.
[02:52:07]  I think people are overlooking the situation in Iran, the strength of the Communist Party, and the fact that Russia for centuries wanted to take over Iran because they needed to reach the warm waters of the Persian Gulf.
[02:52:29]  And it was their opportunity to do that because the Communist Party in Iran was very strong at that time.
[02:52:37]  That's all the comment I want to make.
[02:52:39]  I just want to correct the history of it because a lot of colors who are informed, but not 100%, I think we saved Iran from a communist takeover.
[02:52:56]  All right.
[02:52:57]  That's all I have to say.
[02:52:59]  Joe is in Anoka, Minnesota on our line for independence.
[02:53:02]  Good morning, Joe.
[02:53:05]  Hi.
[02:53:08]  I just want to propose to all the listeners out there to call their representatives and demand a windfall profit tax on the war contractors, defense contractors, whatever they are now,
[02:53:23]  and for a repeal of the tax cuts on the top 10% that President Trump reinstated to lift the burden to the taxpayers on this war and everything else.
[02:53:39]  Prices are going to be going up on everything, especially your insurances.
[02:53:44]  People watch their home insurance, car insurance, health insurance, everything is going to go up.
[02:53:52]  All right.
[02:53:53]  Cornell is in Englewood, New Jersey on our line for Democrats.
[02:53:56]  Good morning, Cornell.
[02:53:58]  Hi.
[02:53:59]  Hi, Kimberly.
[02:54:00]  I'm going to probably need your help on this.

=== Oil Prices and Export Economics (02:39) ===

[02:54:02]  I'm certain I heard somewhere where the president said when oil prices go up, that the oil companies do better or something to that nature.
[02:54:12]  Now, my question to almost everyone out there is, I'm under the impression that we don't import oil, that we're oil efficient.
[02:54:25]  So if we don't import oil and when we have a problem overseas, why does the barrel of oil go up over here?
[02:54:33]  And I'm not certain, but I thought we've been independent of this or other countries since Obama.
[02:54:40]  So that's been a long time.
[02:54:41]  So I don't know if that's true or not, but if it is, it doesn't make sense to me that because oil goes up, it's like years ago.
[02:54:48]  I had a friend who lived in Texas.
[02:54:50]  Cornell, if you don't mind, I just want to pause for a moment to give you some information on that point that you just raised.
[02:54:55]  The United States is a net oil exporter in that we export more oil than we import, but we do still import some oil.
[02:55:04]  I'll read you some information from the U.S. Energy Information Administration about this and then let you finish your point.
[02:55:11]  It says the United States became a total petroleum net exporter in 2020.
[02:55:17]  And for the first time since at least 1949, in 2022, total petroleum exports were about 9.52 million barrels per day, and total petroleum imports were about 8.33 million barrels per day, making the United States an annual net total petroleum exporter for the third year in a row.
[02:55:40]  So the United States uses a lot of oil, but also exports a lot of oil as well.
[02:55:45]  That is the answer to your question there.
[02:55:48]  Okay, but it still, to me, doesn't make sense that our price of oil would be predicated on oil overseas.
[02:55:56]  Now, I say that because for years when I was younger, people in Texas and Oklahoma and all those places, oil with the gasoline was much cheaper than here in Jersey.
[02:56:06]  And it seems to make sense here that the same thing should apply.
[02:56:10]  If we're not getting oil from overseas, we are a net, you already told you, we are a net exporter.
[02:56:16]  So that means we have plenty of oil that we can export oil.
[02:56:20]  So why are we paying on the price of a barrel overseas?
[02:56:24]  I think someone needs to explain it because I don't think that's right.
[02:56:27]  I think that's just as what the president said, big oil making big money, but it shouldn't, I don't think, should be predicated on oil overseas.
[02:56:36]  That's all.
[02:56:37]  All right.
[02:56:38]  Next up is Ruth in Neosho, Missouri on our line for Republicans.

=== Social Security Funding Concerns (03:04) ===

[02:56:42]  Good morning, Ruth.
[02:56:44]  Yes, good morning.
[02:56:46]  Thank you for taking my call.
[02:56:47]  The reason I'm calling is a little bit off the subject.
[02:56:50]  Social Security didn't answer their phone most of the week.
[02:56:54]  I didn't know if they're on vacation, if they're being defunded to where they don't have the people or what.
[02:57:00]  But it is strange that they're saying they need thousands of people, but they're short.
[02:57:07]  And whenever you call Social Security, they say call back during our business hours when it is like 9 o'clock in the morning.
[02:57:14]  And this went on all week.
[02:57:16]  So I'm calling to say somebody needs to give some funding to Social Security or somebody needs to do something for the people in this country that need to talk to Social Security Department.
[02:57:28]  And I thank you very much for taking my call.
[02:57:30]  So Ruth, I'll point out that this has been raised by some members of Congress, Senator Elizabeth Warren and other senators.
[02:57:38]  This is a press release from Senator Warren's office on March 16th that they're investigating Social Security Agency's customer service chaos reaching, quote, new extremes.
[02:57:48]  They're saying that Trump's Social Security head has disrupted Social Security staffing and services.
[02:57:54]  Nearly two-thirds of Social Security employees report customer service has declined in the last year.
[02:58:00]  And several members of Congress have signed on to this letter asking for more information about the staff cuts in the agency.
[02:58:09]  It says that staff cuts have left the agency with an average of only one field office representative per nearly 4,000 beneficiaries, a ratio that is 12% higher than it was before the cuts, with over 100,000 people visiting their local SSA office every day.
[02:58:27]  These staffing reductions translate to declining customer service.
[02:58:31]  According to a recent survey of Social Security Administration employees, nearly two-thirds reported that service quality has declined in the past 12 months, and 70% reported service speed had declined.
[02:58:45]  So Ruth, that seems to echo what your experience was.
[02:58:50]  True, that information, I didn't know it.
[02:58:52]  All I know is that they're saying they're low.
[02:58:54]  It's taken people filing for disability nearly three years for their cases to be heard whenever they're getting losing their houses and everything else.
[02:59:03]  And it has really got critical.
[02:59:05]  So I thank you very much for your information, and hopefully it will be straightened out.
[02:59:10]  Have a good day.
[02:59:11]  All right.
[02:59:12]  Don is in Mount Laurel, New Jersey on our line for independence.
[02:59:15]  Good morning, Don.
[02:59:17]  Hello.
[02:59:18]  I just wanted to talk a little bit about Trump and how he's insulted American heroes like John McCain and Bob Miller and prisoners of war in general.
[02:59:28]  I just hear all these tough military guys calling in, supporting Trump.
[02:59:32]  I'm just wondering where these folks stand when it comes to that.
[02:59:35]  Not only does he spill in the graves of war heroes, he also has to comment about murdered entertainers like Rob Reiner.
[02:59:43]  A lot of Republicans call in and they say, oh, but the Democrats did this.

=== Trump Insults American War Heroes (01:11) ===

[02:59:47]  Oh, but the Democrats did that.
[02:59:48]  One Democrat has said that all POWs are essentially losers.
[02:59:53]  Also, I just want to mention B.B. Netanyahu, who's passed with negotiations going back to the Clinton presidency, has actually been blamed for getting Yitzhak Rabin assassinated because Rabin was seeking a deal with the PLO.
[03:00:08]  And then Obama faced the same issues with Bibi.
[03:00:10]  And finally, once Obama got a deal, Bibi went out of his way to sabotage the deal and eliminate it with Trump.
[03:00:17]  So, I mean, a reporting was being made that Iran was making concessions in the negotiations.
[03:00:21]  But BB goes on a preemptive bombing campaign and nullifies any negotiations.
[03:00:28]  All right.
[03:00:28]  Well, that is all the time that we have for our callers and the show today.
[03:00:32]  Thank you to everyone who called in.
[03:00:34]  We're going to be back with another edition of Washington Journal tomorrow, right here, starting at 7 a.m. Eastern.
[03:00:41]  But next up, Ceasefire.
[03:00:58]  Welcome to Ceasefire.