Eric Erickson and Katrina van den Hoovel dissect the one-month Iran conflict, noting 13 U.S. deaths and 15,000 airstrikes under Operation Epic Fury while debating whether ground operations at Karg Island will trigger a depression or secure nuclear non-proliferation. They analyze the "No Kings" protests as a potential Democratic wave against Trump's executive overreach and voter suppression tactics like the SAVE Act, contrasting these domestic shifts with global fears of Russian strengthening and media consolidation under Jeff Bezos. Ultimately, the dialogue suggests that while military objectives remain contested, the political landscape is fracturing along lines of constitutional authority and economic inequality. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
Source
Participants
Appearances
c
carlos a gimenez
rep/r00:42
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dasha burns
politico00:31
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donald j trump
admin01:09
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john mcardle
cspan04:41
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letitia james
d02:13
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pete hegseth
admin02:10
Clips
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beverly gage
00:22
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david rubenstein
00:13
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don bacon
rep/r00:03
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james lankford
sen/r00:03
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lloyd blankfein
00:26
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ro khanna
rep/d00:02
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joe in michigan
callers02:50
jt in indiana
callers02:13
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Speaker
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Iran Conflict Fallout00:15:26
unidentified
Coming up on Washington Journal this morning, along with your calls and comments live, we'll talk about the political fallout from the ongoing Iran conflict and other political news of the week.
First, with nationally syndicated radio show host Eric Erickson, and then Katrina Vandenhoe, editorial director and publisher of The Nation magazine.
Meanwhile, thousands of Marines and Army paratroopers are on their way to the region.
Even as the Pentagon says, that more than 15,000 airstrikes have crippled the Iranian regime and already eliminated its nuclear threat.
So we began this morning with your views on the Iran war at the one-month mark, and we'll hear from you on phone line split as usual by political party.
Democrats, it's 202-748-8000.
Republicans, 202-748-8001.
Independents, it's 202-748-8002.
Also, a special line for current and former military.
202-748-8003 is that number.
You can also send us a text.
If you do, please include your name and where you're from.
Otherwise, catch up with us on social media on XIITs at C-SPANWJ.
On Facebook, it's facebook.com/slash C-SPAN.
And a very good Sunday morning to you.
You go ahead and start calling in now.
We show you the lead story this morning.
Again, at the one-month mark of the Iran war, this is from the New York Times.
Their lead headline, Portrait of Trump at War, Impulse and Ultimatums.
They write in that story that although the Supreme Leader and many top military and intelligence leaders in Iran have been killed, the regime in Tehran remains in control.
Iran's leaders have all but sealed off the Strait of Hormuz, sending gas prices skyrocketing and rattling investors, and Iran retains control of the material it would need to produce a nuclear weapon, the main threat cited by Mr. Trump in taking the nation into war in the first place.
And the president's allies have always said that his unpredictability is his superpower and that it keeps his enemies guessing.
But they write, it also suggests an inconsistency of purpose that has led the president to keep shifting his goals, even as the risks of the war grow bigger by the day.
That is the front page story of the New York Times, how they describe the conflict at the one-month mark.
It was last week during a press conference at the Pentagon that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was talking about the Iranian war.
He was talking about how the news has described the war.
This is Pete Hegseth from the White House, not the Pentagon.
Never in recorded history has a nation's military been so quickly and effectively neutralized.
Operation Epic Fury is not an endless war.
It's a decisive campaign with clear objectives to destroy Iran's offensive military capabilities and ensure they never obtain a nuclear weapon.
This is stuff for the history books.
This is stuff for legacy.
Mr. President, you are acting now to ensure future generations do not have to live under the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.
However, you wouldn't know it if you listened to the dishonest hate Trump media as you referenced.
The folks here in the room, these cameras, they have a choice.
You're either informing the American people of the truth or you're not.
Because I hear it from my people every day.
Behind every headline you write, there's a helicopter crew in the air.
And behind every news banner you write, there's a battalion on the move.
And behind every fake news story, there's an F-35 pilot executing a dangerous mission.
My message to the media is get it right.
This actually isn't something new to me.
I may be a young guy, Mr. President, but I'm not a rookie in this realm.
In 2007, in 2007, I helped lead the surge, the public fight for the Iraq surge.
Stood and watched people stand in the Senate and declare the war is lost before it even started.
Who was that?
It was Harry Reid.
That was the Democrats and the media working hand in glove.
Back then, it was three years into a war.
Now we're three weeks into an operation.
But see, unlike Iraq, this isn't a tie.
This is not parody.
This is not chaos.
This is success, pure American success on plan, and as the president said, ahead of pace.
Over 10,000 enemy targets destroyed.
Over 140, I think now you're right, Mr. President, over 150 naval vessels sunk, underground facilities destroyed, their defense industrial base in shambles.
And overnight, not only do they not have a Navy, Mr. President, they no longer have a Navy commander.
IRGC's Navy commander was killed overnight in operation.
So no Navy, no Navy leader.
unidentified
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday from the White House at the Pentagon.
This is the latest.
This is the lead story in today's Washington Post.
The Pentagon is making ready for weeks of ground operations.
The headline, if approved, there's a raft of risks for American troops, targeted raids in Iran, sources say, but no full invasion.
That's the Washington Post headline this Sunday morning.
Talking to you this morning, getting your thoughts on the Iran conflict one month into that conflict.
Marvin's up first out of Philadelphia.
Line for Democrats.
Marvin, good morning.
What are your thoughts?
My thought is you got to look at what kind of war they're fighting.
Iran ain't fighting no war of destroy, destroy, destroy.
They're fighting the financial war.
And right now, with the way the gas prices is going and everything that's going up, the world is feeling it.
And as well as Desert Storm, shortly after that, we went into a real bad depression.
Now, my thing is that I wonder, will the same thing happen after this little war that we fight?
And then another thing is that the president didn't even go to Congress to find out why is we over there.
He didn't send people over there to check that they actually have nuclear capability.
You know, he did all this on the fly, you know.
But the one thing that I pray for as American is for our president and America.
Because right now, everything is looking kind of drifty here.
And he's putting a lot of weight on the American people's back.
And my thing is that if you trace the money, I still think he's getting paid off for this war.
Marvin, can I ask you, you used the term this little war.
Why is it a little war?
And what would make it a big war?
What would make it a big war when they land down there and try to take that island?
Ground troops, you're saying.
Yeah, because them Iranians is set up and they're ready for it.
I'm saying I don't think the president thought this war out.
I think that he thinks that he can do everything on his own, that he can make up his own decisions in mind.
You got to get specialists in everything to be a good leader, and you got to listen to all these people and then come up with a conclusion.
If he would have came up with a conclusion, they might have wouldn't have took the straits of a muse.
Now they got another power, you know, another weapon.
Now they know that because now they're asking when they do, if they do make any peace talks, let them take over the Strait of Muse and let people pay taxes to get through there.
I mean, anytime they want, they can.
Hello?
Go ahead and finish your thought, Marvin.
Anytime they want, they can shut down the Strait of Amuse when they get mad or not.
Marvin, thanks for the call from Philadelphia this morning.
Thank you for taking my call, and thank you so much for your program.
I learned a lot.
I didn't realize we had built 17 bases in Greenland, and I know that was ages ago.
Not really ages, decades ago.
But at any rate, I learned so much.
Thank you so much.
Callers are wonderful.
Some of them really should obey laws.
What do you think about the Iran conflict that we are now one month into?
I pray for our military all the time.
I pray for Israel.
I pray for Iran because there are wonderful people in Iran that are being killed by their leaders that are not worthy to lead.
But at any rate, I pray for this world.
And thank you, C-SPAN.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, callers who call and obey the laws.
There aren't that many C-SPAN Washington Journal laws.
No laws here, just some guidelines on how to make this program work.
That's Lida in Albuquerque.
This is Carl in Chicago on that line for current and former military.
Carl, go ahead.
Yes, I'm 92 years old.
I was overseas in the Air Force for four years.
The Iranian war was poorly planned.
It's likely to see how it can be resolved.
The Straits of Hormuz opened again, and anytime soon, it's going to be major tragedy for most of the very exceeding period of time.
It evolved in a totally wrong way.
I happen to be stationed in the Philippines.
I just read that the whole Philippines transportation system depends so much on diesel fuel that they cannot have now that it's virtually bringing their economy to a halt.
So thank you.
That's Carl in Illinois.
This is Mike, Youngstown, Ohio.
Good morning.
Mine for Democrats.
Good morning, and thank you for taking my call.
I think that the war in Iran, Trump will do anything to keep the focus off of Epstein and the Epstein files.
What I think is all the files should be released and let the truth come out because obviously he's hiding something and he'll go to any length to have his way.
Not only that, I don't think he's too brave a person.
Thank you.
It's Mike.
This is Timbo, Mountain Home, Arkansas, Republican.
What it is, is it's this Iran was trying to bomb the Demona Israel weapons reactor, and there's 65 years of accumulated plutonium there at the exact center of the seven continents.
The inventory names that the reactor is called is the A-Bomb and Nation of Desolation, the Atomic Reactor Corps of Thick Ovid, the Crucible Fish and Story of Jesus, Hitler's Pretonium Sun Bomb, the final solution.
You know, that justified what I caught about that call.
I mean, I don't want to be rude to people or callers.
I've caught many years, once a month.
I spent many years in the service, commander of five-man ops, Navy SEAL team.
Most of my career was in the Mideast.
This is the most successful war in the history of right, and it is, and it's beneficial to not just our country, the world.
They are monsters.
Iran for 47 years, and all the Hamas, all these proxies, all this money and bombing, what was it, 3,700 when they went into Israel.
That was all funded by Iran.
You go back to Bay of 400 Marines killed.
This goes on for 40, since Jimmy Carter to now.
And now, I believe our last six, seven Oslo murders in our country that were terrorist attacks, they almost all Kafata, every one of them, wearing it, saying it right when they're shooting at everybody.
Now we have them here.
unidentified
Can I ask you, the first call today was saying that Donald Trump didn't go to Congress and make the case for this war.
And the Washington Post, in their write-up about the one-month mark of this conflict, they touch on that point.
In their story, they write, the president chose to launch the war without first making the case to the American public or to Congress, which they said perhaps contributed to the absence of a rally around the flag moment that many wartime presidents see.
That's, again, the Washington Post today and their write-up.
Do you think that might have something to do with it?
Do you think there has been an absence of a rally around the flag moment for this particular conflict?
Thank you for giving us a chance to use our voice to give our opinion.
I think everything about this spells an impending disaster.
The fact that Trump ran on a central platform of stopping wars and not starting any new wars, I think he needs to go to Congress and get the authority to continue with this plan of his, which seems half-baked.
I have a cousin and a granddaughter that are serving in the military right now.
And I think that Trump has put our military in harm's way when he alone, in his own life, was a draft Dodger five times.
I don't think that he and his Secretary of Defense or War Department really have an understanding of war.
They're playing a dangerous game.
I feel like our president is drunk with power.
And the fact that his emissaries in the Middle East is some real estate buddy and his son-in-law, there's so much that seems wrong with this decision.
And if he does put troops on the ground in Iran, I feel like four weeks could easily turn into four years.
We have violence and war just spreading throughout the world.
And under this administration, he's making things worse.
And it's becoming normalized.
The violence, the bullying talk, and the swagger of Pete Hegset and the whole administration is an outrage.
And I hope that cooler minds can prevail so that our young people won't die in this conflict that's fastly accelerating into something that's maybe beyond control.
That's Maureen in Mobile, Alabama.
It's about 7.15 on the East Coast, taking your calls this morning in this first segment of the Washington Journal on the one-month mark of the Iran conflict.
202748-8000 for Democrats.
202748-8001 for Republicans.
Independents, it's 202-748-8002.
And if your current or former military, 202748-8003, a line we've set aside for you.
We're also checking in on various op-eds in newspapers around the country, not just the major papers here on the East Coast.
We showed you the Washington Post and the New York Times this morning.
This is from the Colorado Sun.
Mike Litwin is the columnist there.
This is just the first couple graphs of his piece today on the Iran war.
The war in Iran is now a month old.
Happy birthday question mark, he writes.
And we're either on the verge of a negotiated end to the war or the beginning of a dangerous ground war that would almost certainly put many more Americans in peril, or neither.
If you don't know, and I certainly don't, that's because just guessing here, Donald Trump doesn't know either.
Mike Litwin writes, which is scary.
I mean, you've got to want to be a dictator who doesn't feel the need to consult Congress, who didn't feel the need to consult NATO, but then lambasted the alliance for not helping, whose mood and actions can be determined by which person he last saw on TV in charge of a war of choice that should never have been chosen.
Mike Lippwin in his column today, if you want to read it, Colorado Sun.
This is Ann out of Philly.
Good morning, Life for Democrats.
Good morning.
I agree with the last caller, Maureen.
And our troops are in peril if they put them on the ground.
It has been said coming out of Iran that they are waiting for them to arrive on the shores and come and do a land battle there.
They're waiting for us.
And I feel that they're walking into a trap.
The war is unconstitutional.
And they can, you know, he can, he even said, you know, he called it a war the other day.
And he, you know, said they don't want him, you know, calling it a war.
But it is, in fact, a war.
They're claiming that they, you know, have annihilated or decimated the obliterated, I'm sorry, all this stuff last summer.
And that wasn't true, or it was true.
Who knows?
We can't trust this president's words.
And, you know, his actions are what matters.
And it's just, it's horrible.
It just really is.
It's Ann in Philadelphia.
This is Bobby in Florida.
That line for current and former military.
Go ahead.
Yes, good morning.
I guess in response to your question, I have to say I have a feeling that I don't even belong in this country anymore.
I watch TV coverage.
I see protesters running down the streets carrying flags of countries that are our enemy, that hate us, irrespective of anything we do.
They, meaning the protesters, are in the streets riding and calling Trump a king and everything else that you can imagine.
I just have a feeling that we have, over the past 40 years, have lost the country.
I came out of Vietnam.
I had a feeling then that I was returning home to a strange place.
And over the years, that feeling has been confirmed.
Did you see any of the No Kings rallies that took place yesterday where you were in Florida?
I saw it on TV.
I didn't see it.
I didn't witness it in person, no.
But CNN and the other channels proudly displayed as much of it as they could possibly jam in on us.
I fully expect to have Wolf Blitzer standing on the streets in Tehran announcing that America has lost the war, just mimicking Walter Cronkite and his pronouncement in Vietnam that ruined the whole damn thing.
Anyway, keep it up, CFAM.
Bobby, appreciate that from Florida.
Coming back to those protests, we showed you a picture just a second ago.
This is from the Washington Post coverage here in D.C., some 3,300 rallies across all 50 states.
The picture there were demonstrators from that No Kings rally here in D.C. marching across the Memorial Bridge.
That's the bridge across the Potomac River that connects the Lincoln Memorial to Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington Cemetery, sitting on the Virginia side of that bridge, right at the other end of that bridge.
The marchers there on the front page of the New York Times, the headline that they went with this morning, they asked, will the primal scream of no kings echo in the voting booths?
Their story, their coverage of it this morning.
This is John in Princeton, New Jersey, Independent.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Thanks for this opportunity.
Seeing what I'm seeing now, I'm actually worried a lot about protection of the United States itself.
I think we've made a lot of enemies, and I have very little confidence now that we're prepared and staffed to intervene and prevent terrorism in the USA.
We've been through that a few times.
I actually was in the air at 9-11.
I had to land in Denver.
This could easily happen again.
And I really am concerned about whether the FBI is up to protecting the country internally.
It doesn't take a lot of people to do some horrible things here.
I just don't see where this war is going.
John, on protecting the homeland, your thoughts on this, the shutdown at partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security looks like it's going to be going on for a bit longer, even though the president signed that executive order that would pay some of the TSA agents.
But this partial shutdown, and there's a whole lot of agencies in the Department of Homeland Security, looks like it's going to go at least for another week or two since the House and Senate can't seem to agree on legislation to reopen the agency.
That's pretty terrifying.
But on top of that, Homeland Security is aimed inward rather than at external threats, which, you know, Iran must have people thinking about doing that here, doing some damage here.
That's a big worry.
I don't think this move is going to stand up well when historians get to it, get to figuring out what it all meant.
John, in terms of preparing for what's next, the Pentagon has asked Congress for some $200 billion that they say would help replenish stockpiles of munitions, many of which have been drained in this conflict.
Do you think that's something, even amid the shutdown fight at DHS, do you think that $200 billion war supplemental is something Congress should pass?
I think we have to replenish our arms.
We've made a lot of enemies, but like I said, I'm worried about short term.
In the next year, we could be in this big political mess we're in.
I think we could be vulnerable to domestic terrorism and some serious damage done in the U.S. You know, that's about all I can say.
That's John in Princeton to our line for current and former military Charles Fort Lee, New Jersey.
You're up.
Good morning.
I'm a multi-decorated Vietnam veteran.
I'm 85 years old.
I have three master's degrees as well in counseling.
And I would like to suggest the following: so long as the president keeps troops not going to Iran, I'm for him.
I don't want to confuse many people's hatred for Trump and what he's doing in this war.
This, to me, is a righteous war in that This has been going on with these mullahs literally since 632 when Muhammad died.
It's been a struggle between the Shiites and the Sunnis.
The Shiites want to dominate the world and basically destroy everybody else.
I would suggest if the president knocked off a couple of very prominent sites in which people pray, he would get them to come to the bargaining table.
Charles, you think that the president should target religious sites?
Just one or two to show that he means business.
I think this would get them to come to the bargaining table.
They literally want to kill everybody and the world.
And I don't know that people really understand that.
Do you think doing that would cast this war into a religious war and everything that comes with that?
No, no, no, no.
They are religious.
But I'm trying to say, they are so fervently religious that they would come to the bargaining table.
Of course, anything they do is just going to be temporary.
And I think we really should understand that.
Trump may win this war, so to speak, by getting them to the bargaining table, but that's what war is all about.
Wars are temporary kinds of events.
I don't know that we'll see a war like World War I or World War II again, but this is a temporary event that they are concerned with their survival, their domination of the world.
And if we can sort of get them to accept the fact that they're not going to dominate the world, maybe, well, this man is president.
Well, that sort of puts it off for two or three or four years.
It's been put off now for 47 years.
And I just see the fact that they are bombing the Sunnis in these other countries should tell you something.
They hate Sunnis because they really felt as if they should be in charge of the religion.
Coming back to some of the op-eds on the one-month anniversary of this conflict.
This is Ani Chikavadez-Vadzi in the Washington Examiner writing this morning, a strain of commentary prevalent on both the isolationist right and anti-interventionalist left insists on framing the military campaign against Iran as Israel's war.
The claim is convincing in its simplicity and serves a recognizable political function.
It feeds a broader campaign to demonize Western power and delegitimize its exercise.
It's also wrong, she writes.
The confrontation with Tehran reflects America and Western imperatives that would demand attention even if Israel vanished from the map tomorrow.
Start with the nuclear question, she writes.
A nuclear-armed Iran would pose a direct strategic challenge to the United States.
It would transform the balance of power across the Middle East, and it would trigger a U.S. response.
The story, the op-ed from the Washington Examiner, if you want to read more.
This is Carol in St. Louis, Missouri.
Democrat, good morning.
You're next.
Good morning.
Western Power Imperatives00:12:37
unidentified
What I was thinking is when they send our troops over there, if this happens, can you imagine after Pete Hexis said we will give no quarter?
Now, do you think they're going to give our guys any quarter?
And actually, when Hexis said that, that's actually against war agenda.
You're not supposed to say those things.
So, oh my goodness, I just, I can't even guess.
And I truly, and this is truly from my heart, I blame Israel for this whole mess.
So that's it.
That's all I got.
That's Carol in St. Louis.
It's just after 7:30 on the East Coast, having this conversation in this first segment of the Washington Journal today will, of course, take you until 10 a.m. Eastern, as we always do at 10 a.m. Eastern today here on C-SPAN after this program.
It's our ceasefire program.
This week, it was Democrat Henry Queyar.
Republican Carlos Jimenez joined the conversation, sat around the table, and part of that conversation centered on Congress's role when it comes to Iran.
Here's from this week's ceasefire.
You don't get answers to what are the clear objectives, what is your exit.
We know how many vessels, we know how many things that we've destroyed, we understand.
But what is the exit?
What are the clear objectives?
And I think it's very, very important that we have that.
Oh, I think they're valid, but also I have a clear, I have a clear knowledge or at least indication of what the objectives are.
The objectives are to make sure that Iran can no longer pose a threat to its neighbors in the world with ballistic missiles, that Iran can never possess a nuclear weapon, and then some kind of change in the government.
And so, although that one is the third objective, and maybe that's not reachable.
Now, for me, I'm a lot more aggressive than probably some of my colleagues.
We're at the 20-yard line.
I want to score a touchdown.
I don't want to kick a field goal.
Kick a field goal means we're going to overtime.
We're going to do it again.
And so the only way that we score a touchdown is we actually do change the regime.
unidentified
C-SPAN ceasefire program will re-air at 10 a.m. Eastern this morning, right after this program.
Back to your phone calls asking for your thoughts on the one-month anniversary of the Iran conflict.
John is in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Republican, good morning.
Good morning.
Yeah, John here in Bethlehem.
My feeling right now is that we'll probably go into Carg Island with 82nd Airport and the Marine Corps.
And we are not going to have any problems there.
If we lose five people at all with this small invasion of this island, it would be a lot.
We need to retain the Iranian civilians there to make sure that we understand how to run those spickets and how to take over the engineering of the island.
We need to send some combat engineers in behind our people.
The Marine Corps has those kind of people on those ships, so that'll be very advantageous.
I doubt if the Republican Guard will charge across the Strait of Hormuz and masters troops on the mainland of Iran.
I doubt if they're going to do that.
And if they do that, it'll be a turkey shoot.
They are not going to be able to come across the strait in boats and attack our people on the island.
And if they do, it would be such a violent military mistake.
John, you say the U.S. should take that oil hub at Carg Island.
The island for a year or two, and we need to get the Arabs and everybody else involved in helping us control that island.
Someday we may leave it, but we need to stay there for at least a year or two.
So, a U.S. ground presence in Iran, on Carg Island, for a year or two is what you're calling for.
Along with the Arabs and the other three or four nations that are right near there, including Oman.
The other thing we need to do is we're going to probably have to control, which is going to be very touchy.
There's some three or four basically oil basins in Iran where the oil's coming from to the island.
We may have to put some Marine Corps, for example, a Marine Corps regiment or a Ranger battalion or so to control a couple of those basins so that the flow of oil goes back into Carg Island.
In the end, we need to isolate Iran if we have to, almost like we are doing to Cuba.
It becomes a big Cuba.
So, I think we're going to be able to do it without sending less than 5,000 to 6,000 military troops.
We need to hold Carg Island in the end and control those figures and leave the Iranian people that are there on Carg Island for the time being to do this until we learn how to do it ourselves.
That's John in Pennsylvania, Horseshoe, North Carolina.
Mike is next.
Independent, good morning.
Mike.
Good morning, John.
Thank you for taking my call.
I agree with the last caller and a few callers ago, a decorated veteran, that, you know, war is ugly, and war is politics by another means.
And politics hadn't seemed to work over the last 47 years.
And Iran, over almost five decades, have been threatening the United States, you know, death to America.
Put Israel aside and just say what they're threatening the United States.
Like I said, the politics hadn't worked.
Throwing money at them hadn't worked.
You can't appease people like this.
They're religious fanatics.
With the last caller, we should take Carg Island and put a hold on the oil flow in the area.
But also, I believe before the war started, I think we should have had a little more international involvement first.
Maybe, you know, most of the Arab countries plus other major countries around the world and Europe.
I think it would have looked better on the Trump administration because I understand how a lot of Americans, you know, think Trump is a bully and just going around the world, but something had to be done here.
And I think it's about time.
Boots on the ground.
It's going to probably be necessary.
That's about all my thoughts on it right now.
God bless American.
God bless the troops.
Thank you, John.
Mike, on the international view of this conflict, this is from the UK online news source, The Independent.
Their op-ed on the one-month anniversary of the war.
Iran, one month on, the numbers tell a terrible toll of war.
This is the lead editorial.
They write it was supposed to be a short, sharp surgical strike that would topple the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and make the world a safer place.
One month later, the Ayatollahs are still in power.
Vladimir Putin has been strengthened, and the world economy is sliding towards recession.
They say there's only one number that is really needed to understand the folly of this war.
One-fifth of the world's oil passes through the Straits of Hormuz until February 28th.
The Strait is now closed, except possibly to a handful of ships willing to pay the Iranian regime vast sums in Chinese currency.
The editorial board of the Independent.
If you want to read more, it's the online paper.
It was also Thursday on that cabinet meeting that President Trump held that he talked about UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer and other NATO countries.
He was frustrated with their lack of assistance when it comes to Iran.
You know, we were the longest bond, the longest ally.
Australia, too.
Australia was not great.
I was a little surprised by Australia.
I wouldn't say anybody was great other than the five countries in the Middle East.
We never really had very much support.
You know, we spend trillions of dollars supporting countries.
And this is Little League.
This isn't the big league deal.
This is sort of Little League pool for us.
This was an easy.
This was like we decimated them in a period of weeks.
The first week it was over.
In the first few days, it was over.
I think the Navy took us three days to essentially annihilate that.
They weren't there.
So if there's ever a big one, which I hope there's not, but if there's ever a big one, I don't think they're going to be there.
And that's not fair.
And we have to remember that as a country, because we spend trillions of dollars protecting Europe, protecting the countries of NATO.
They weren't there for us.
For small time.
This is small time.
You know what?
Venezuela is a big deal, but it's not the big one.
They weren't there.
So what makes you think they'd be there if we needed them for something?
unidentified
President Trump from Thursday, taking your phone calls this morning on the one-month anniversary of the conflict in Iran.
And this is Ted in Oregon.
It's Astoria.
Good morning on that line for current and former military.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Yeah, in February 1979, I was in the Air Force.
I was stationed at Chanute Air Force Base in Illinois, a big training base, and they were training Iranian air crews at the time.
They were training NATO air crews at the time.
These were officers, and they were there to learn advanced NAIA navigation.
And I was a 55255 in the civil engineers, the 3345th Civil Engineers on Chanute.
And we would go into their quarters to do tasks.
And it was really kind of funny to us kids because they always came from their home country in a pack of six.
And they would be put in a basic bachelor officer quarters.
It was like a duplex.
And there would be two bedrooms on one side, two bedrooms on the other side.
And whenever we went into the Iranian quarters, half of them were very devout.
They had their prayer rugs rolled out.
They spoke in Farsi.
They ate their traditional Iranian foods.
The other three on the other half of the duplex, they would talk to us boys in English.
They had a Trans Am in the parking lot.
Keep in mind, we were only about 15 miles north of Champaign, Urbana, where the University of Illinois is.
And half of the Iranians were very devout.
The other half, they spoke English, they drove a Pontiac Trans Am, they ate fast food, they chased American girls, they listened to rock and roll, and immediately I could see the difference in the Iranians.
And it wasn't much longer after that that they were gone after the fall of the Shah, which we really didn't care if they were there or not.
Iranian Cultural Divide00:12:09
unidentified
So thank you.
Ted, do you care about whether we are over there now?
What are your thoughts on the conflict today?
Well, I always saw the Iranians, even after the hostage taking, the failed rescue mission in the desert.
I just saw the entire Iranian regime, especially after the fall of the Shah, after the Ayatollah came.
We were now had rolled the clock back probably hundreds of years from where the Shah was trying to modernize Iran.
The Mullahs wanted no part of that.
And for 47 years, there has been, in my opinion, a split in either the devout or the people that aren't so devout in Iran.
Yes, I agree a little bit with what they're saying.
But here's one big thing is we bombed this place last summer.
Oh, it's done.
It's over.
Now we've done some more damage for no reason at all.
I mean, I know there's things that they've been saying and doing, but he pulled a trigger without Congress's knowing and knowledge of anything, without the country knowing that we're fixing to stick our hands in a hornet's nest that is not going to end in a little bit.
This is something that can drag on and drag on, just like Iraq did.
Weren't it a guy across the waterway over there with a ragtop on his head that come over and put billions of dollars in his hands, in his youngin's hands?
Is there not something going on with the military that his family is going to prosper over this fight?
See, there's a lot of things that's not adding up here.
There's a lot of things that are.
We've got veterans that do not get nothing.
They're sleeping in boxes, and we got billions of dollars to blow another country up, but we ain't got billions of dollars to take care of our own.
That's what don't make no sense here.
Let's make common sense.
We're suffering.
The working man is suffering today.
The veterans that had fought the war before are suffering today, and our country is not putting the money into the people who fought the good fight.
John, did you happen to be going to put us in another fight?
We're being in another fight over something that we should not be in right now.
We should not be in this fight.
unidentified
That's John in South Carolina.
This is Ted, out in Hawaii, up very early this morning for Hawaii.
Go ahead.
Yes.
Thank you, John.
And you are Job the Saint in dealing with all these people.
You're quite a moderator.
I got to hand it to you.
Anyway, I also was in the Air Force in the Vietnam War, and I was at Chanute.
Your caller a couple of callers ago mentioned he was in Chanute getting training, and I also went to Chanute in the Air Force and got training before I went to my first service base.
What year are we talking, Ted?
We're talking 1971-72.
Gotcha.
I was in 71, 72, 73, 74.
When the war got over, I said, we're going to Hawaii.
So that's how I ended up in Hawaii.
Anyway, yeah, my, I don't want to say best friend, but he's my very, very good friend.
He's a chemical engineer in high school, and he was over in the oil factories there at Riyadh in Saudi Arabia.
I remember when he was over there.
And we have plenty of Americans that can go in and run that base at Carg Island.
We don't need to have the locals telling us how to run that.
It's pretty simple equipment.
And you just start at point A and get to.
I was also in the merchant marine running a 800-foot steamship as an engineer.
So I understand engineering and running a fuel depot.
And we don't need them in there.
We can take our people in there to run Carg Island.
And should we take Carg Island, Ted?
Well, yeah, I mean, but we don't want to, you know, decimate a bunch of Americans, you know, to do it.
But, you know, it all comes back to the start of the war.
We needed to have a discussion instead of just diving in headfirst.
I was also a lifeguard, and you don't dive into water that you don't know how deep it is.
You're going to hit the bottom and break your head.
And that's what we might be doing here is diving in shallow water and breaking your head open.
I'm sure there's plenty of people that have tried that.
But in any case, yeah, it's unfortunate that we have the heads of state that we now have.
I won't mention any names, but there's better ones out there.
And I'm just amazed that we don't have somebody in the Republican or the Democratic Party that could run this show a lot more sanely and carefully.
It needs to have a lot of thought put into it.
Ted, if it was up to Ted in Hawaii, is there anybody who you would feel that way about, Democrat or Republican, that you wish?
Actually, in the last year or two, I've noticed quite a few people in the Republic.
I'm basically a Democrat, but there's a lot of good Republicans real Republicans that are not Trump people.
They're real Republicans, like the old-fashioned Republicans.
So, yeah, there are people on both sides that could do, but they're not maybe as articulate as our current president.
He's very articulate.
That doesn't mean he knows what he's doing.
He likes to have people.
Who are one or two Republicans that you like?
Oh, well, my mind is in gear to the war and to running Carg Island and all of that when I first started making this call.
But there's several good Republicans that could be doing this that are good at their job.
Senator Warren on the Democratic side is a good one, but there's some that equally like him that they're good thinkers.
They can think this problem through without being excessively inarticulate.
I think Trump is articulate, but not in a knowledgeable way.
He's not knowledgeable.
He wants people that are, he wants people that are, you know, will swear an oath to him, but they don't really know what they're doing.
But they'll swear an oath.
And that's the problem I see in our government at the time: they'll swear an oath to Trump that I'll be loyal, but they don't really know, have the knowledge to know what they're doing.
And that's what scares me.
We need people that know what they are doing.
And I think people need to think about it, they'll hail to Trump, but they need to have knowledge rather than just plain loyalty.
Trump is all insistent on loyalty, and he needs to have people that know what they're doing.
And that's more of what we need in there to get this solved.
He has fostered communication between different views.
And America, we're at the 250 years this year.
We're just, we're pre-teens still.
You look through history, a lot of civilizations don't last this long.
Everything is negotiable.
He fosters communication.
What's an example of him fostering communication, Jeff?
It's numerous.
He gets these blips out where people think he's talking off the top of his head.
No.
Everything is organized and he fosters communication.
He tweaks everybody's nerve ends.
And this is how discussion and progress is made.
The founding fathers said it's a messy business, this experiment of no kings, which I thought that was on 1776, it's not before, but we're still fighting it, and I understand it.
We need to have the war to take out the prevent Iraq from, I'm sorry, prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons.
And I think that's important.
I think they've been a threat to Everyone in the region and their support of terrorist organizations has been a nuisance.
And also, it's wonderful to take away that aspect of the alliance between Russia, China, and North Korea.
So we take out, and North Korea should have happened a long time ago.
We could have stopped North Korea from having nuclear weapons, but previous presidents didn't have the courage to do what President Trump is doing in Iran.
GOP Messaging Opportunity00:08:39
unidentified
That's David, Arlington, Virginia, last caller in this first segment of our program.
Stick around, plenty more to talk about this morning.
unidentified
A little later today, we'll be joined by the nation's Katrina Vandenhoe.
But first, we'll take up those topics with nationally syndicated radio talk show host Eric Erickson.
We'll be right back.
Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series.
Today, with our guest, Beverly Gage, a professor of American history at Yale.
Her book, G-Man, J. Edgar Hoover, and The Making of the American Century, received numerous literary awards and prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, the Bancroft Prize in American History, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Biography.
Her most recent book is This Land is Your Land, a Road Trip Through U.S. History.
She joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein.
Now, when biographers spend five years, 10 years, 15 years or so with a person, they often fall in love with them because they spend so much time with them.
Did you fall in love with J. Edgar Hoover or did you come away saying, geez, he's not as good as I thought or wished he was?
To me, I was just fascinated by him the whole time.
I thought that he was important, and I thought that he was really an interesting, complicated character.
We mostly know him as a villain, and I did find that he was much more complicated than that one-dimensional portrait.
unidentified
Watch America's Book Club with Beverly Gage today at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific.
Only on C-SPAN, a space exploration is underway.
C-SPAN brings you special live coverage of the Artemis II moon mission launch.
Join us Wednesday with live video from the Kennedy Space Center.
We'll also bring you expert analysis on the mission and its crew.
Watch your calls as the nation looks ahead to returning astronauts to the moon's surface.
Don't miss C-SPAN's special coverage of the Artemis II moon mission launch.
Join us Wednesday at 4.30 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, or online at C-SPAN.org.
Washington Journal continues.
C-SPAN viewers know Eric Erickson.
Many probably listen on weekdays to the Eric Erickson Show or download the podcast.
Mr. Erickson, start on yesterday's No Kings protests.
What did you make of the third national No Kings protests day around this country?
You know, democracy in action.
I think it's a good thing people turn out.
Whether I agree with them or not, happy to see it.
And guess what?
We've got no kings in the country.
We'll have a midterm election.
The Democrats will probably do well in the midterms, and then we'll have a presidential election two years, and Donald Trump will go away and fade from the political spectrum.
So, I mean, God bless them for getting out.
I think people on my side need to be a little careful thinking that they're all paid operatives in the streets.
That's not true.
I may disagree with them, but I mean, I'm going to church today.
They went to No Kings protest yesterday.
It's kind of a religious experience these days for a lot of people to go protest.
How well do you think they're going to do in the midterms?
unidentified
Do these protests tell us anything about whether this is going to be one of those wave elections or this is something more on the margins?
Look, I don't know that we're going to have a wave election if only because of redistricting issues, but I do think the Democrats are going to take back the House of Representatives more likely than not.
We're seeing in special elections around the country, including down in Palm Beach in a Republican district in a Democratic county, that the Democrats are much more motivated to vote.
We've seen this here in my state in Georgia.
We had a special election that's a 65% Trump district that picked up a Democrat because Republicans didn't turn out to vote.
We saw it in Fort Worth, Texas, another Republican district that swung from a 20-point Trump win to a 17-point Democratic win in that district.
The warning signs are there for the Republicans that their base is not motivated, and Democrats are.
Liberals had the No Kings protest.
The conservatives had the conservative political action conference that took place over the past couple days down in Texas.
What did you make of this year's CPAC?
Did that tell us anything about the midterm elections?
Yeah, there's no enthusiasm there.
You know, I actually went on Twitter, and I'm not a big fan of CPAC, to be honest.
I find it's now more of a grifting convention and not really a conservative conference.
It's a clown show for the most part.
And I got on Twitter to look and see, and I thought I must have muted the CPAC account.
No, there just wasn't a lot of buzz about it.
I mean, you had Steve Bannon was there after all of his appearances in the Epstein file, and all the people who cared about Epstein, apparently from the right, don't anymore.
It's a waste of time and probably time for a sclerotic organization to fade away.
Was there a time when you thought it wasn't a waste of time?
Yeah, you know, when I was in politics as a kid getting started, I used to go and it was huge and it was big.
And over time, it's just kind of become this, you can pay some money oftentimes as a sponsor and get on stage, and it's not as well policed.
So we've seen the American Conservative Union and CPAC over time just kind of fade.
This is part of the problem of the conservative movement generally these days.
A lot of major organizations that have been around forever have kind of lost their purpose.
Now they're part of the Trump Republican Party.
And if they've got to abandon principles to line up with the president, they do.
They call themselves conservative and they aren't necessarily.
And, you know, I'm one of those old school conservatives and used to be an elected Republican.
I think conservatism still matters, but it's the conservatism that actually believes in conserving things, not just going in the way, the direction of the president or the way the winds blow for polling.
What do you think are some of the conservative organizations that currently have a good purpose?
You know, Advancing American Freedom for Mike Pence, his new group is great.
Grover Urquis, Americans for Tax Reform, continues to be a fantastic conservative organization.
And at the state level, you've got fantastic conservative groups.
You've got the Texas Public Policy Foundation in Texas.
You've got great state and policy networks around the country and the states.
I think conservatism is still alive and well in the states, but in Washington, D.C. now, the Republicans and conservatives used to joke about liberals going to cocktail parties, and now they're the ones doing it.
You mentioned writing on Twitter last week, I was looking at your Substack page.
You mentioned in one of your pieces that Republicans here in Washington are missing an opportunity here when it comes to ICE agents at airports and how they've come to the aid of TSA workers.
Yeah, you know, I think this could actually be turned into good PR for the GOP.
The Democrats' position is that airport funding can't happen for TSA, for Coast Guard, for FEMA, unless Republicans are willing to change ICE in such a way to make deportations almost impossible.
A judicial warrant, which they want to deport someone, would bog down the federal court system.
You'd either have several and criminal cases or you'd have judicial warrants for deportations when immigration judges already exist for that purpose.
The Republicans have a great messaging opportunity that essentially Americans are stuck in airports so that illegal immigrants can't be deported and Democrats want us to choose, but they're not doing that.
I saw Mike Collins, who's running for the U.S. Senate, stand in line on his way out of D.C. back to Atlanta.
Most Republicans made sure to bypass the line.
It was great and smart PR for him and his campaign for the Senate in Georgia.
Republicans, I think, should be doing this showing they're with the people.
They're standing in the lines.
They're being miserable, too.
What do you think about Republicans in the House and Republicans in the Senate disagreeing on how we go about the reopening of the Department of Homeland Security?
Well, you know, I think people at home need to understand the way that Republicans and Democrats in Washington both look is that the opponents are the Democrats and the Republicans, and the enemy is the House versus the Senate.
The Democrats and Republicans in the House hate the Senate and vice versa.
The Republicans of the Senate, I think, got a little too clever by half in trying to compromise and say, you know what, we won't fund ICE and Border Patrol.
They've already gotten $120 billion.
Let's just get this open.
Republicans in the House actually have something they want to fight for, and the House Freedom Caucus has the votes to obstruct it.
Mike Johnson's in a very difficult position in the House with a three to four vote margin in the House.
So the Republicans of the Senate need to be a little more accommodating of that.
Touch Some Grass00:02:50
unidentified
Eric Erickson, our guest this morning, you know him as the host of the Eric Erickson Show, the nationally syndicated radio show.
You can also download his podcast, his sub stack, and you can call in this morning and chat with him.
Phone lines are open to do so.
As usual, Democrats 202-748-8000.
Republicans 202-748-8001.
Independents 202-748-8002.
Joining us this morning on Palm Sunday.
I know Eric Erickson usually takes some time on Good Friday during Holy Week to talk about the meaning of the holiday season, the Holy Weeks days.
What are you going to say this week?
You know, whether people believe the resurrection of Christ or not, even a lot of atheists, secular historians recognize the execution of a Jewish carpenter 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem as one of the biggest events in human history, profoundly shaped Western civilization.
And so on Good Friday for my national radio show, we stopped talking about politics and we focused for three hours on that.
It's a big deal.
And 3 billion people on the planet, the largest religion on the planet, they're all going to celebrate in unison in various ways this week.
And I think it's just worth pausing.
You know, the world is so crazy right now.
And if you're a Christian, you believe the Bible, you understand God's got a plan.
And you may not like what we're going through, but everything's going to be okay.
The level of anxiety we see in Washington and around the world and in this country from people, they hate their neighbor.
They don't get along.
You can only be friends with people who share your politics.
It's not the way it's supposed to be.
You're supposed to love your neighbor, whether you agree with them or not, and everything's going to work out okay.
Just relax.
You're very upfront about your Christianity.
Around a dinner table, the topics that are always told not to talk about are politics and religion.
Do you abide by that rule?
No, I talk about both of them.
And program directors across America, my radio show, wish I wouldn't, but it connects with the audience.
There's a lot of anxiety right now.
And, you know, after COVID, we've become so isolated as a people.
We're much more likely to have friends on our phone than we are next door.
But it's not the people on our phone, our Facebook friends are on Twitter who are going to come check on us if we're sick or water the plants if we're out of town.
It's your actual physical next door neighbor.
And data overwhelmingly shows that people who go to church regularly for worship services, people who are engaged in their local community, have much better mental health, a better outlook on life.
They tend to live longer.
They tend to be happier.
And I think people have got to remember that phones have anchored us to a world that's not real.
The real world's outside your door.
Go touch some grass and meet your neighbor.
And if you're struggling with anxiety and you don't know what to do with the world, find your local homeless shelter, find your local food bank, your soup kitchen, and get involved there and help other people.
And that'll make you feel better just by helping other people.
Politics as Religion00:15:39
unidentified
You mentioned that you've been in politics for a long time.
You're in the real world of making Georgia right now, but you're very critical of Washington, D.C. Do you have many friends here in Washington of those folks in the House and Senate?
You know, I do.
It's kind of fun.
I don't like to go up there.
It's been a while since I've been up there.
I used to commute back and forth all the time.
But, I mean, I love where I live.
I never wanted to move to D.C.
Well, that's a lie.
I wanted to move to D.C. until I got married.
And my wife is like, I don't want to live in a big city.
So I commuted for a while.
My wife is not a big fan of big cities.
And, you know, I'm kind of fortunate to live where I do.
I'm an hour from the Atlanta Airport.
Can get anywhere in the world I need.
And I've got a lot of friends in Washington, but I just don't want to be up there.
I don't think it's the real world.
And being in Middle Georgia or somewhere in the heartland, you actually get to see people in the real world all the time and interact with people where you realize, you know, people don't really hate each other because they're politics.
They're friends with each other.
They go to the same schools.
They go to the same banks.
They go to the same grocery stores.
And the world's really not as antagonistic as Washington wants us to believe.
We'll let you talk to the real world of C-SPAN callers this morning.
Plenty for you already on the phone lines.
Ruben is up first out of Somerville, New Jersey, line for Republicans.
Ruben, you're on with Eric Erickson.
Good morning, Eric.
Hey, I got a question for you, Eric, because you sound like the guy who could answer this.
And that is, I'm a traditional, be it Reagan Republican, I have remained with the Republican Party, although, as you know, there are a lot of points that do not intersect between Trump and Ronald Reagan.
For example, tariffs, you know, Reagan's approach to tariffs and the traditional Republican perspective is what we call free trade, not fair trade.
We don't really believe in these wholesale tariffs because we shave taxes.
Also, unions, traditional Republicans are not fans of unions or fans of what's called right to work, non-unionization.
So, Ruben, what's the question?
And then like abortion ban.
We want a national abortion ban.
Well, my question is, where's the home for Republicans today?
I remain as a Republican, but is there really a home?
Are we ever going to return back to Reagan Republican?
You know, Ruben, great question on Palm Sunday.
We're pilgrims moving through this strange land right now, you and I, because I largely agree with you.
I'm very opposed to the unions.
I've gotten some angry phone calls from the White House over the last year over my opposition to tariffs.
And I think the party is kind of abandoning some of its pro-life positions.
Listen, we're in the middle of a realignment in this country, Republicans and Democrats alike.
This is the first time in modern American history we've seen this sort of realignment.
It's uncomfortable for everyone, I think, by and large.
I would just tell you, look for the person, not the party.
Within the Republican Party, there's still a lot of people out there who believe like you and I do that tariffs are actually bad economic policy and we should stand for life.
And they may be hard to find to a degree, but they're still there, particularly at the state level.
Even in New Jersey, there are some great candidates out there, Republican candidates, I'm sure, that you can find.
And, you know, you just got to stick with it.
I wouldn't abandon ship.
I would tell you, just be patient.
The parties realign historically every 100 years or so, and it's our turn to do it.
One of the main priorities of the party right now is the SAVE Act.
Where are you on the SAVE Act?
You know, listen, I support the SAVE Act in principle, but I think it's probably overbroad.
The citizenship provision in it as written is a deterrent for a lot of people.
I think it would have been a lot simpler had the GOP just made a clean voter ID bill and pushed that.
It would have made messaging much more simple.
They all would have been united.
I just look, I'm friends with the authors.
Mike Lee and the Senate, Chip Roy in the House, and Chip is a very good friend of mine, as is Mike.
I understand why they did it, and it's a bill around which you can build some compromise and maybe walk some provisions back.
But I think if they had just focused on voter ID, it's an 80-20 issue in this country, even among Democrats.
It would have been something that was easier to pass, easier lift, and not as divisive.
You now got people in the Republican Party saying, if we can't get the SAVE Act passed, we'll never have fair elections again.
And yet, somehow, Donald Trump won the popular vote without it.
We go to Rome, Georgia.
Your fellow Peach State resident, James Independent.
Good morning.
You're next.
Good morning.
Oh, yes, Mr. Erickson.
You know, there are certain things to me that it seemed like you all support Donald Trump for any reason.
You know, a lot of the things like the person was saying, you know, such as you used to talk about the Constitution.
The voting rights issue you're talking about.
It's a state's rights issue.
I've never heard a state's rights issue anymore.
You support Israel, and Israel has abortions are legal, marijuana is illegal, and Israel and Christians, their beliefs, don't go along together.
Met and Yahoo, they do not believe in the New Testament.
You know, I've seen him say this before: that really, you are the non-believers.
James, Gary, your point, give me a chance to respond, Eric Erickson.
Well, first of all, James, I got to tell you, I'm sorry about what happened to your courthouse.
For those of you around the country, historic courthouse built in the 1800s burned down last week, and hope they'll rebuild it up in Rome.
But you know, James, I support Israel because it's the only democracy in the Middle East.
I don't support it for religious convictions.
I'm a Presbyterian.
I'm not a dispensationalist, and we don't have to worry about the theology here.
Just Israel has a right to exist, and they're our strong ally in the Middle East.
And look at their amazing technical capabilities in fighting Iran.
So I support them.
As far as the Republican Party goes, you know, I'm willing to call out Donald Trump.
Some people aren't.
I'm a conservative and a Christian before I'm a Republican.
I supported him last time in 2016.
I opposed him, didn't vote for him.
I suffered his wrath in 2016, but I like his policies more than I like the Democrats' policies.
And while there are a lot of them I don't like, I'm glad he's there instead of Kamala Harris.
How did you find a home in the Presbyterian Church and not some other branch of Christianity?
So I grew up Southern Baptist, actually.
I came to Macon, Georgia, as a college student from Louisiana and went to a Baptist church like I'd grown up in.
And it was so liberal.
It kind of blew my mind.
I didn't know what I was walking into.
And my Baptist preacher in Louisiana told me I should find a PCA church.
And so I've been in the Presbyterian Church in America since 93.
My wife as well grew up Southern Baptist and goes to church with me.
And one day, though, she's still going to dunk our kids because she doesn't accept that they've been baptized just by having water thrown at them.
How much does politics get brought up from the pulpit at your church?
How much should politics be spoken about from the pulpit?
None.
In fact, you know, Ryan Burg, who's a great analyst in religious matters of this country, actually has a lot of data.
And Pew Research actually has done some polling on this as well.
In progressive theological Christian churches, you're far more likely to hear politics in the pulpit than conservative theological churches because they tend to, conservative churches tend to preach expositionally, that is, chapter by chapter through a book of the Bible, where if there's something political in the headlines, it may come up, but typically not.
There's been this movement on the right now among the so-called Christian nationalists to kind of embrace that sort of politics from the pulpit.
I do talk radio for a living.
If I was getting a political sermon every week in church, I would leave because I don't think it fills my soul to hear politics from a pulpit.
I hope Mr. Erickson will talk a little bit about the Iran profiteering by the Trump family.
Eric and his brother Don Jr. are heavily invested in a drone manufacturer.
They put $160 million, I think, into this company, and now it's worth $2 billion.
They're also in the predictions businesses that it was recently discovered that someone made lots of people, not lots of people, But a few people have made millions, hundreds of millions of dollars off predicting when Iran would be attacked.
And all of these prediction companies, the Trumps are invested in crypto.
Also, you bring up enough topics already.
Let me get Eric Erickson a chance to respond.
Yeah, you know, so Henry, I'm actually surprised the Democrats haven't made this their issue.
There clearly are even behind the scenes Republicans who talk to each other about the corruption concerns.
Take the Trump family out of it.
There are clearly people within the administration who tend to have some issues.
And we do see these bumps in predictions markets prior to certain things happening.
I'm surprised the Democrats haven't made this their number one campaign issue.
I think it would probably resonate with Americans more than some of the other things Democrats are running on.
At the same time, I'm not opposed to the president's family finding a good drone manufacturer and investing in it.
We actually do need great drone manufacturers, and my understanding is they pick probably the best one to do it.
Now, full disclosure here, I've turned down for my radio show advertising from the predictions markets and from sports betting.
I refuse to take their money.
I think we're headed towards a terrible, terrible place as a country on sports betting, particularly with young men.
And now the predictions markets, they're just a clever way to try to get around anti-sports betting laws in some states.
And I personally think that Congress needs to step in and crack down on all of it.
The predictions markets and the gambling and the way a lot of media companies and even news outlets now are embracing predictions markets and predictions apps.
It's all very deeply corrupting.
And I think we're going to see plenty more FBI indictments in the next few years of people trying to steer games or news based on predictions markets and sports betting apps.
On the Iran war, where are you in the Iran War?
You know, when I was in fifth grade, I grew up in Dubai.
When I was in fifth grade, the Iranians tried to blow up my school with me in it.
And I'm a big fan of blowing up the Iranians.
It needed to happen.
People call this a war of choice.
I think that's a talking point.
Iran was almost at the point where they had so many missiles and rockets that they could have overwhelmed the world's entire supply of Patriot missile batteries and iron dome missiles.
And they would have used it.
You know, so we're in Holy Week.
I really do believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, lived a perfect life, was crucified, died, buried, and rose again from the dead on the third day.
I fundamentally believe that.
I believe in Adam and Eve.
I believe in Noah's Ark.
And some of you listening may think that's crazy that you don't, but understand, I really do believe that.
The Iranian theological regime fundamentally believes they have an obligation to destroy Israel to bring about the apocalypse because they think they win.
And the entire aim of the Iranian theocratic regime is to destroy Israel, which they've been working on.
Now, you may say we can stay away from Israel.
They're not our friends.
But Israel actually is our natural ally in the Middle East.
So when you're looking at someone like me who really believes in the resurrection of a man and you look at the Iranians, they fundamentally believe they have an obligation to bring about the apocalypse.
They want to do it, and we need to stop them.
And we were at the point militarily where had they been able to go a few more years in missile development, even without nuclear weapons, we would not have been able to stop the destruction of Israel and probably not our own destruction.
We are, after all, their great Satan.
Do you think we can stop them without boots on the ground?
You know, I don't know.
We stopped Japan without boots on the ground in World War II, but of course we had to use nuclear weapons, and we have no intention of doing that now.
Can we?
I'm not sure, but I think we should do everything we can to try.
I do believe that you've got to keep in mind with the population of Iran, overwhelmingly 80 to 90 percent of that population does not support the regime.
They just have to be unarmed and defenseless.
The portion of the population, two to three million people, that supports the regime is well funded, well armed.
So you've got a tyranny of the minority in Iran that keeps the majority of the people at bay and suppressed and depressed.
If we can weaken that minority enough, you may be able to see the majority of the Iranians take back their own country.
I grew up with a lot of Iranian refugees from the revolution.
I would love to see them take back their country, but they're going to have to do it.
I do not think the United States needs to engage in regime change.
If we need to take over some of the islands in the Persian Gulf to secure the oil supply and the Strait of Hormuz, so be it.
But an invasion of Iran, it's the size of Alaska, and it's extremely, it's more mountainous than Alaska, although not as high in elevation as Alaska.
It would be a dangerous game for us to try to invade Iran with boots on the ground.
Staten Island, New York, Kevin Republican, you are on with Eric Erickson.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I'm glad to be on.
I got two issues to do.
I'm a former U.S. Navy.
I did two tours in the Middle East and Southeast Asia during pre-desert storm.
And the idea of the Democrats trying to undermine the presidency in dealing with the situation at hand is totally ludicrous.
Number one, our nation was founded, and in God we trust.
And there are multiple Christian groups, faith groups in Iran, as well as the Middle East, which it is our sworn duty to, as Christians, as our presidency and vice president, is supporting and acting accordingly.
And they're continually undermining the presidency is almost borderline treasonist because of the situations that they have created and participated with behind the scenes.
If you look at the situation at hand with Barack Obama backing and advising the Black Lives Matter movement, which they admit they are trained Marxist rebels and receive money from Iran, that in itself is an act of treason.
You know, listen, I always hesitate to call my political opponents treasonous.
I think they have serious policy disagreements with me.
But to the caller's point, I think we're having to deal with the fallout of Barack Obama's policy positions on Iran over the last number of years and Joe Biden's as well.
I don't believe that the Obama deal actually would have kept Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
If anything, I think they've taken the money and funded more terrorism around the world.
They took the money and they funded more missile development.
Democrats like to believe we would have peace in our times if we had just followed Barack Obama's plan.
I think Israel would probably already be under withering assault had Donald Trump not taken out Soleimani in his first term.
And this assault, I think, is the result of Iran taking the money they got from Barack Obama and building arms and terrorist regimes around the world.
Is that a Chamberlain reference on peace in our times?
Yes.
Look, I really do think that Democrats wanted to think differently on the Middle East from everyone else, and they thought differently in ways that weren't wise.
Federal Deficit Crisis00:06:06
unidentified
Just because you want to think maybe everybody else got it wrong doesn't mean you're going to get it right.
And I think Barack Obama and Joe Biden fundamentally misunderstood Iran, in large part because I think their worldview really does preclude them believing that someone takes their faith as seriously as the Ayatollah does, that they really did believe that there's no way this guy could want to bring about the apocalypse.
That would be crazy.
Yes, it would be crazy, but they really believe it.
Madison, Wisconsin, James, Independent, good morning.
Good morning.
I had a question for the guests.
Thanks for taking my call.
First of all, I'd like to state that Ronald Reagan, everybody keeps bringing up Ronald Reagan, if you remember right.
Ronald Reagan's interest rates for houses were $11.75, $11.75.
And it's like, so the question is, every Republican president has left the United States with a bigger deficit than what they started with.
And I don't see this clown that's in there now as being the worst of all.
And what do you think would happen right now if the Democrats charged the Capitol saying, hang Vance, hang Vance, and started bashing the Kaplan?
How many of them do you think would be shot by ICE or Homeland Security agents?
James, look, yeah, Reagan came into office because the Jimmy Carter economy, they had to skyrocket interest rates to bring down rapid inflation when over time those interest rates did come down.
And Reagan was also fighting the Soviet Union successfully, I might add, largely by bankrupting them because we had a robust economy and could outspend them.
The federal deficit, though, is a huge problem that I don't think either Republicans or Democrats really want to grasp with right now.
In fact, I really do think that the Republicans are headed into a fiscal crisis, just as the Democrats are as well.
Mitch McConnell, I had a conversation with him a while back on stage at a conference, and he said until we hit that crisis, no side is going to do anything about it because the other side will blame them for solving the problems because they're going to have to make hard decisions.
So sadly, I think the way Washington works now is we have to hit the crisis for Washington to solve the crisis, but we all see what's coming.
The Democratic solution is just raise taxes on the wealthy.
You could take 100% of their income and still not have enough money to be able to solve the problem.
And the Republicans say we don't want to raise taxes, but they keep spending more money.
At some point, we're going to have to do very draconian cuts.
However, if we were willing to take on entitlements and make changes to Social Security and Medicare, we could really ease the glide path for us.
And God forbid we do that.
Nobody wants to in Washington because senior citizens vote more than anybody.
On Ronald Reagan, is Ronald Reagan your favorite Republican president of the modern era?
Well, of the modern era, yeah.
Calvin Coolidge is my guy, the man who believed that Washington's role was to get out of everybody's life.
There's actually a very famous story where a reporter came up to him and said, Mr. President, I was bet that I could get you to say five words.
And he looked at her and he said, you lose.
Sharon in Minnesota, Democrat, good morning.
Good morning, John.
Good morning, Mr. Erickson.
Thanks for taking my call.
Going back to the No Kings, when your segment first started, Mr. Erickson, you made a comment, and it's not word for word, but you said something like they, meaning the Democrats or us yesterday, had our protest, and today you have your church.
And so I guess my question is, I'm a little insulted because it almost sounds like you that only Republicans go to church.
And I'm getting ready to head out the door here soon to go to my Presbyterian church where I have taught Sunday school for 15 years.
So yes, yesterday and for three other or two other times, I have been out protesting with the masses against Donald Trump and against No Kings.
And today, I'm going to church.
So can you please explain your comments?
Because it just didn't make any sense to me because certainly you can't understand or think that Republicans are the only people that go to church.
Oh, no, Sharon, thank you.
And happy Easter to you.
No, but the data actually does show overwhelmingly the Democratic Party and progressives are increasingly secular in this country.
And a lot of times secularists have replaced actual organized religion for these sorts of protests.
So not everyone who went is using it as a substitute for religion.
But the data actually shows, and not my data, a lot of objective outside data shows that Democrats have replaced kind of organized religion going to church on Sunday with organizing protests and showing up.
And they get some level of fulfillment in society now from these level of protests, which is why we increasingly see them on the Democratic Party side and not as much on the Republican side.
Do Republicans go to church exclusively?
Absolutely not.
I'm not one of those people who thinks that only Republicans go to church.
But I do think within the Democratic Party and within secular society, increasingly protest, particularly political protests, is a substitute for organized religion these days.
Organized politics has become religion for a lot of people.
Sharon, you said, and I think you're still on the line, you've gone to all three of these nationwide protests, No Kings Days.
What do you get out of these protests?
Solidarity, sister.
I've been doing, I'm an activist.
I've been doing fanning out there for women and for civil rights for all my life, as long with my grandma, my great-grandma, my mom.
And I tell you, yesterday, there was in my, I'm coming from a little small town, about 15,000 people up here in Bemidji.
And we had at least 3,000 people standing together side by side, both sides of the street.
Protest Substitutes Faith00:06:30
unidentified
And I don't know.
I guess it's kind of the same thing I feel when I go to church.
I have a lot of friends when I go to church.
I met tons of people yesterday.
I got phone numbers from people that are going to become my friend now.
And so, I don't know.
I feel I had my grandkids.
I had to get rid of my grandkids because I really felt like I needed to be there yesterday.
Yeah, Thomas, first, I'm skeptical of the numbers, in large part because they come from Hamas and Hezbollah, which are sympathetic to allies with Iran and also very good propagandists.
At the same time, are there costs of war?
There are.
I would just say that Hamas and Hezbollah shouldn't put their military operations inside hospitals and it would make them less likely to be targeted by the Israelis and the Americans.
Are there Americans trapped overseas?
There are some, mostly they're able to get home.
And I would also be very skeptical of the reporters who are inside Iran because while they say they don't have handlers, they have translators.
The translators are the handlers from the Iranian government.
Less than 15 minutes left with Eric Erickson this morning on the Washington Journal.
Mr. Erickson, I was calling to say that you say that you're pro-life, but how can you be for this war since the first target was, it might have been accidental, I don't know, but they killed school children.
And it seems like the Republicans are only for people that are not born yet, but they don't care about the ones that are born already.
War is also a terrible thing, and it's a tragedy if it was actually us that blew up the school, but we did it if we did it by accident.
The Iranians are targeting civilians in the Middle East randomly.
The Iranians targeted me when I was in fifth grade in my entire school.
They're targeting Israeli civilians.
War is a terrible thing, and innocent people die in war.
But yes, I do believe in being pro-life.
I do believe in the support of the unborn, and all the way through grave.
I'm opposed to euthanasia practices as well and the medically assisted suicide movement because I think life is sacred.
But life is sacred.
Innocent life is sacred.
But the Iranians are also deeply evil.
And they're an evil that would try to destroy us.
And I would rather us destroy them, not the Iranian people who were held hostage by the regime.
But the destruction of that regime would make the whole world more peaceful.
Can you come back to that grade school story and just fill in some more details?
Yeah, so when I was in fifth grade, I grew up in Dubai, went to the Jamira American School, which was about two blocks from the Persian Gulf.
It was run and funded mostly by my father's oil company, the Dubai Petroleum Company.
When I was in fifth grade, we had to evacuate our school, and we were out of school for three to four days plus the weekend because Iranian proxies had targeted our school to be blown up, as well as the American School of Abu Dhabi during the Iran-Iraq war.
The Iranians tried to blow up my father's oil platform.
He was a production foreman for the Dubai Petroleum Company.
He was actually very near Syri Island, which is one of the islands we have to control to be able to control the Strait of Hormuz.
And the Iranians actually blew up several of the platforms in the field.
He had to escape his platform.
The American Navy parked a ship between his platform and the Iranians.
I mean, I grew up in this world where I was a target as an American in the Middle East, and it was overwhelmingly always the Iranian proxies trying to kill us.
For the rest of my time in middle school through ninth grade, we had to have guards at our school every single day to protect us.
So he went to Mississippi College in Clinton, Mississippi, became a fundraiser for the Boy Scouts, and then a football coach and Latin teacher at a private school, struggled to make ends meet with a growing family, and a friend of his from his Boy Scout fundraising days got him into working offshore in the Gulf of Mexico for Conoco Oil.
And when I was five years old, Conoco was in charge of the oil production for Dubai and basically packed us up and moved to Dubai.
I was there from when I was five to 15 and came home in 19, so from 1980 to 1990, grew up in Dubai.
Did you ever ever have any interest in going into that line of work?
And how'd you get to politics?
unidentified
No, I didn't.
In fact, my dad strongly discouraged me from following in his footsteps.
So I wanted to go into politics and actually became a lawyer instead.
Did the poli-sci history route at Mercy University in Macon, Georgia, and practiced law for five years, but really had a real interest in politics.
Growing up overseas, I wasn't really an athlete, but politics was a way to connect back to what was going on in the United States, and I enjoyed it and kind of fell into it over time.
Radio shows in this day and age when there's so many different ways to consume media, what's the role of a radio show today?
You know, I think a lot of people differ in that approach.
A lot of people do bad Rush Limbaugh impressions in talk radio.
I was actually a real good friend of Rush's who told me not to try to be him.
So my job is to give people the news, and the ratings as a result, I think, really set me apart from a lot of people in radio.
There are still a lot of Americans who listen to the radio when they can't get a live stream or a podcast.
When the internet's down, they turn into radio so I can give them the news of the day, what's actually happening in the country, tell them what I think about it, and take their phone calls like we're doing this morning, which is a great way around the country to interact with people.
Do you think enough radio shows take live phone calls?
Enough members of Congress are willing to take live phone calls?
unidentified
You know, I don't know that they do.
In fact, I have some program directors around the country who tell me I should stop taking phone calls.
But, I mean, I don't actually do interviews on my radio show.
I take calls from the callers, and it's me and the callers.
And I find that that builds a lasting relationship better than making the listeners be eavesdroppers to a degree for my entire show.
I can interact with them, take those calls, and actually have a better sense of what's going on around the country and find stories that other people don't find just because I'm willing to take the call from Bob in Oklahoma City or Jerry in Sacramento.
I'd like to say I respect you for taking phone calls, Mr. Erickson.
Well, thank you.
I don't agree with a lot of things that you say, such as, well, we all know that Donald Trump is a very pious man.
He's always lived an unscrupulous Christian life when it comes to his marriages, or he don't wish money or gold shiny objects, and he ain't self-grandeuring.
He wouldn't do nothing like that.
But I would like to talk to about the Iran war.
The Iran war is something I do believe.
We did need to bomb all their missiles and try to take out as much of their military as possible.
But as far as the endgame, when they still have a million soldiers ready to fight to the death, and they have their uranium, rich uranium hit all over the country of 650,000 square miles and caves and mountains all over, which they have a lot more than rich uranium since Trump pulled out of the deal.
I know it was far from perfect, but since that time, the Russians brought in nuclear scientists and nuclear physicists to expediate the make the best centrifuges in the world and reach it faster than ever.
So that didn't really help the problem.
And as far as taking over that island, if we want to, we don't need that island.
We can shut down the Straits of Hormuz today.
I mean, that's not a problem, but the whole world's in chaos.
The Philippines and a lot of these Asian countries are on the brink of a complete collapse because of this war.
Yeah, Tim, listen, I won't defend the president's character.
I've been critical of it myself.
As for the Iran war, I'm glad to defend it.
People cite a million soldiers in Iran.
What they don't realize is that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is a small component of that.
The Iranian army has forced conscription from a lot of Iranian men who don't necessarily have loyalty to the regime.
We can't expect that they would all fight.
In fact, there have been plenty of reports now of internal divisions and soldiers not getting paid over the last few weeks.
We are destabilizing that regime.
People look at the Iranian army numbers and think these are loyalists to the regime.
You have to understand they're not.
They're forced into military service in Iran.
The real army is the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is a smaller component of it, and we're thoroughly eradicating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Those are the best trained, the elite fighters, and they're not able to stand up to us.
If we can destabilize them a little further and destabilize the militias, as Israel is focusing on, I think we do actually have the ability to fundamentally allow the Iranian people to take back their country.
As for Karg Island, it's in the northwest corner of the Persian Gulf.
It's far away from the Strait of Hormuz, about 300 miles.
What people have to understand is the Strait of Hormuz, which has the Arabian Peninsula jut up towards Iran.
That's where the deep water is.
And the deepest water in the Persian Gulf, it's pretty shallow as a sea.
It's about 150 feet deep, and an oil tanker fully loaded can sink to about 100 to 120 feet deep under the water.
So that area around Iran, they've got the longest coast with the Persian Gulf.
There are some islands, the Abu Musa Islands, that are in the Straits of Hormuz.
You do have to control those.
That's where the Iranian militia is.
That's where the speedboats and the sea minecraft are.
Karg Island, I think, is a distraction.
It's 300 miles away.
To the extent the Iranians think we're going to try to take Karg Island, that's where all of their oil flows to go out to sea.
Because remember, shallow sea, you've got to have deep water ports, and Karg Island is out in the sea in deep water.
They export all their oil there, and that's where it gets on tankers.
But again, it's 300 miles northwest of the Strait of Hormuz.
We want to control the strait.
You've got seven islands there, the Abu Musa Islands, that have to be controlled, and they're not well manned, and also they're not really full of civilians, so it makes it easier targets for us.
Time for just one or two more phone calls with Eric Erickson this morning.
Sandra in North Carolina, Republican.
unidentified
Good morning.
Good morning.
My concern is I continue to hear people speak about religion.
Use the name of the Lord.
The Lord speaks very clearly that we're to take care of each other.
We're not to fight our enemies.
We're actually to love our enemies.
But yet, and still, every time I listen to people like Eric Erickson, you know, it really does not make sense in terms of caring.
This president is using every lever of power that he can to hurt people.
You know, you look at the people in his backyard who's starving, yet you're putting all this gold in the White House, putting your name on money, you know, building new ballrooms, spending money on this, on that.
When people need health care, you know, people need food.
Look, we are to love our neighbor, but also we have enemies in the world who want to destroy us.
We can turn our cheek, but also the government protects us, and the government's ordained by God to protect us from our enemies.
As far as taking care of other people, that's our obligation individually.
I don't actually read the Bible and think it's a command for the government to take care of us.
I think the government actually does health care terribly.
Our health care system now is far worse than it was before Obamacare.
Costs have gone up dramatically because of Obamacare.
When American citizens take care of themselves and take care of their neighbors, that's when we as a nation shine.
And we've offloaded our individual responsibility to care for our neighbor to the government.
And it's not a coincidence the rate of homelessness has gone up, the decline in education has gone up the more we depend on government to do the things we are individually obligated by scripture to do.
If I can return to your taking live calls on your program, something we do here.
Just want to ask if you have any recommendations for how we do it as somebody who's in this business.
I ask occasionally we'll have callers call into this program and they'll say they don't like how we split up the phone lines.
Democrats, Republicans, and Independents worried that that's creating more divisiveness.
I just wonder your thoughts on that.
You know, I like the way you guys do that, actually.
It gives everybody an opportunity with an individual phone line.
My show, we take calls from around the country from listeners.
We don't screen thoroughly, although it's got to be topical to what I'm talking about of the day, which is a little different from what you guys do.
And so we do very much like what Rush Limbaugh did at an open line Friday where people can call in generally about other things.
I have a call screener who screens calls just to try to make sure it's the best callers of the day who are getting in because I got a lot of stuff to say and maybe in a show we'll take six callers.
So it's screened more, but I actually think it's a great thing.
And I don't think that this move towards podcasting is helpful in that regard as far as perpetuating democracy and conversations among people because you can't call into a podcast, but you can call into a live radio show.
You can call into C-SPAN.
And it's a better way, I think, for members of Congress and policymakers to hear what people around the country think.
So I appreciate the way you guys do it.
And I do like the division between Democrat, Republican, Independent.
And probably some people occasionally play the system thinking that, oh, if I call in as a Republican, I can get in even if I'm not.
But having a broad range of opinion and conversation and being willing to challenge people like me on the show, I think actually makes for a more robust conversation.
And having more conversation with the country is what we need.
As you and I talked about earlier, we in this world we live in now, we're so isolated.
We're all on our phones.
We don't talk to each other.
Talking to each other is the way we're going to improve the country.
Coming up in about 30 minutes, we'll be joined by the nation's Katrina van den Hoovel for your phone calls.
C-SPAN Ceasefire Coverage00:04:18
unidentified
But until then, we've got about 30 minutes here.
It's open for them.
Any public policy issue, any political issue you want to talk about, now's the time to call in.
Phone numbers are on your screen.
Go ahead and start dialing, and we will get to your calls right after the break.
On C-SPAN's Q&A, former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, author of the memoir Streetwise, on his upbringing in public housing in Brooklyn, attending Harvard, and rising through the ranks of one of the world's largest investment banks.
He also talks about the 2008 financial crisis, which happened during his tenure as CEO, and the power and influence of Goldman Sachs executives within the U.S. government going back decades.
There's a lot of ex-Goldman people, so much so that there was a time, and this was meant as a pejorative government sax, as if going into government service was a pejorative.
We took it as a compliment.
And then there were comments about Revolving Door, but our door didn't revolve.
We didn't hire from government.
Government hired from us because the ethic of Goldman and the people we hire tend to be service-minded.
unidentified
Lloyd Blankfein with his memoir Streetwise tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's QA.
You can listen to Q&A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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It's America's Book Club.
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Radio host Dennis Prager reflects on his latest book, If There Is No God, the battle over who defines good and evil.
Oliver James in Unread describes being functionally illiterate and learning to read at age 32 while documenting that journey on TikTok.
Watch Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org.
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Any public policy issue, any political issue that you want to talk about, now is the time where we turn the phone lines over to you.
As you're calling in, here's what's going on on C-SPAN this morning at about 10 a.m. Eastern.
We will take you to C-SPAN's Ceasefire.
Dasha Burns was joined by Democrat Henry Queyar, Republican Carlos Jimenez for that discussion.
You can watch the entire program after the Washington Journal ends this morning.
And then coming up here on C-SPAN at 11.30 a.m. Eastern, our coverage of the Artemis II crewed mission to the moon continues with a QA with the astronauts on that mission.
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So, yeah, I have to say right off the bat, I suffered a PDS, you know, the Trump derangement syndrome.
But I actually agree with some of the things that this call you just had on Mr. Erickson said, in the sense that I think that Iran brought a lot of what's going on on itself.
And it goes back, and it's really to the hatred or the destruction of Israel.
So Israel.
So Rubio, I think, said it first, and Trump kind of followed it up in the beginning.
And how did this war start?
I think they knew that the Iranian regime, and you have to separate the regime from the people in Iran, but I think they knew they were going to be in one spot, and there was a plan.
And they went and missed that one spot.
And I think it was either through Mossad or through the CIA.
They knew that all these people were going to be at that one place.
Trump later on said, well, we knew they were going to come back on us, and that's why we did this.
We were never really in intimate danger, but Israel, well, I say that, you know, I agree about some of them defending themselves, but there's no doubt they've gone too far with some of their what you would call defending themselves.
And when they do that, what they've done is they've created a whole new population of people who hate them over there.
They write that Donald Trump spends his days immersed in the war, receiving several briefings a day, either in the Oval Office or the Situation Room.
Some of the briefings include a short montage video of less than a minute.
White House officials say primarily of raw footage of military strikes that U.S. Central Command also shares on X. When Mr. Trump is deliberating a decision, he goes around the room and asks his advisors what they think.
The story goes on to say, Mr. Trump gets military advice from two main sources, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and General Dan Kaine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Mr. Hegseth is the president's go-to, they write, when it comes to policy and publicly defending military policies, U.S. officials have told the New York Times.
But General Kane, a former Air Force F-16 pilot and Pentagon liaison officer to the CIA, is the military's Trump whisperer.
Its main discussion point with the president on operational matters.
This from today's New York Times, if you want to read the story.
This is Rick, also in the Keystone State Independent.
Good morning.
unidentified
Thank you for taking my call.
Blessed Palm Sunday.
There's too much for just one sign, but I just want to make a comment on the Iranian war.
You know, we saw it's coming when Hegseth called in all the brass from all over the world and he did his little PC principal Blubbering there to all of them, but I think it's really rich that Trump is with, you know, he's been accused of indeferments and everything, and he becomes this great.
I built the military up.
But I wonder how small he would feel he really feels when he's in the presence of like King Charles and knowing that King Charles, both his sons, serve proudly in their military, the Queen's military.
And what did Trump's sons do?
Where's their military history?
I just find it so rich that this guy, this whatever you want to call him in the office, the White House, he's just so full of blubber, and his ego is so small that he has to be this big military big mouth.
And he got this into a spot where, you know, the entire world didn't need this.
Look at Australia.
Look at some of these countries that are becoming a state of emergency because their energy levels are so low right now.
This is what she had to say: so we are a nation built on the rule of law, on checks and balances, and on the fundamental idea that power belongs to the people, not to one person, not to one party, and not to those who believe that they are above the law.
But right now, those principles are being tested.
Our institutions are being tested.
Congress, unfortunately, has been co-opted.
And our courts, unfortunately, some of them have been co-opted as well.
But the defense of our democracy does not lie in the courts.
The defense of our democracy lies in the hands of the people.
And across this country, we are seeing efforts to concentrate power, to undermine democratic institutions, to intimidate those who dare to stand up and speak out.
The weaponization of government, vindictive petty politics.
We're seeing attacks on our immigrant brothers and sisters, attacks on workers, attacks on voting rights, and attacks on the very freedoms that generations before us fought to secure.
As the Attorney General of New York, my job is to defend the Constitution, to protect the people of the state from harm, and to hold the powerful accountable, no matter who they are.
And I will not capitulate, and I will not genuflect, and I will not bow, and I will not break, and I will not bend what flows through my DNA, my blood, is the ancestors of those who have been through a lot worse.
And so let me be clear: the law matters in this country.
And we have challenged illegal federal actions in court.
And we, Democratic Attorneys General, have stood up to those who think that they can use fear and division to control our communities.
But we are winning.
And I guess that's why I'm a target.
And we will continue to fight because no one is above the law.
Reverence for the law and due process is foundational to our democracy.
But defending democracy, my friends, is not the job of one leader or one Hollywood star.
It is the responsibility that we all share.
unidentified
Letitia James, there at that event in New York, USA Today, with their wrap-up of some of the posters that were held, their coverage of King's rallies.
There's one, I like my democracy, Neat, No Ice is that poster.
It's a photo gallery that you can click through to see some of the signs.
There's one.
There's so much to protest the protester rights, I couldn't decide what to put on this sign.
USA Today with Photo Galley.
Go ahead and click through if you want at their website.
This is Jerry in Lewis, Delaware, Independent.
Good morning.
Good morning, first-time caller.
I really appreciate the opportunity.
Just want to make a few comments as a piggyback to the marches yesterday.
This really applies to both Democrats, Independents, and Republicans.
You know, I'm old school.
I just remember the days where basically there was compromise between the politicians.
Great example, Tip O'Neill, Bob Dole.
You know, there's a lack of statesmanship between Congress and the Senate today, as well as among the different politicians from the different parties.
And, of course, there's a lack of accountability.
You know, I look at the example of the current and soon-to-be former Secretary of DHS, you know, spent $200 million of our dollars on ad campaigns to promote herself and, of course, the agency.
I'm concerned about the present that Iran is sending to America, the 10 oil tankers.
I was wondering, you know, they said they had enough nuclear to make 10 bombs.
And we're getting 10 oil tankers sent to America.
I wonder if they've been inspected.
That's Donald in the Donald, New York, the Reuters story.
Trump saying that Iran is allowing 10 oil tankers to go to the U.S.
That story from Friday, I think, is when it first came out.
This is John, Tampa, Florida.
Democrat, good morning.
Good morning, C-SPAN, and thank you for taking my call.
I was calling in reference to Mr. Erickson.
I'm a Democrat.
I attend church since the time I was 15 years old.
I believe in Christ, and I'm a staunch believer.
But also, I'm a United States Marine, former Marine.
And I saw the Middle East, and it's always been about oil.
What his school he mentioned was attacked.
It's most likely the fact that the poorest poor, the poor were being mistreated, and the United States was over there stealing the resources of that country.
Every war that we fought since Vietnam, even including Vietnam, was never to satisfy or to save those people.
It's always been to enrich select people who run the oil companies.
Venezuela, we called in when C-SPAN held the forum just before or during the Venezuelan invasion, the question was: is they're going after drugs?
They were after oil.
The oil barons are running the country.
Donald Trump is assisting.
Also, Mr. Erickson mentioned, okay, that fact that the evil, he said, this is what he said, that Iran was evil.
When he says, well, they call us the great Satan.
Isn't that equivalent?
Isn't that equivalent?
They're the same exact thing.
So we have been stilling.
And if you look at the current administration, and if you talk about the Bible, okay, Christ would never sanction any of this.
Christ would be, take care of the least of these, take care of the poor of the poor, the Good Samaritan stories, not the great harlot who sells out our country, the false prophet who's lying every day in our faces.
Like we're getting into the world.
I'll ask you, you said earlier that every war we fought is to enrich select people.
I wanted to talk to you about the rally for the king.
I don't think Trump is the king.
I don't think he thinks he's a king, even though he's got a big ego.
I'd rather see rallies on no pay for Congress, no pay, no benefits for Congress.
Congress needs to go to work.
Rallies like that need to be taken.
They're the ones who think they're king.
They're the ones who control our lives.
They're the ones who make the decisions.
Trump can make an impression or can give an idea of a thing, but they're the ones that have to vote on it.
They're the ones who control our lives.
How about rallies for no pay for Congress?
I think that would be a great idea.
What do all those protesters think on that?
Maybe they could think of something like that to do, because that would be for Democrats and Republicans and Independents, not just for one party.
Thank you.
Thank you for taking my call.
Judy, does it surprise you that it would likely take a constitutional amendment to have something like that, no pay for Congress?
It's only because, and this is pointed out by constitutional scholars and folks who come on the show, it's Article 1, Section 6, Clause 1 of the Constitution.
It says the senators and representatives shall receive a compensation for their services, i.e., they shall be paid for what they do.
So no pay for Congress would require changing Article 1, Section 6, Clause 1.
Okay, how about if we change that?
We, the people, have the right to change it.
We can tell the Congress to go in and vote.
And by that, I mean we vote every four years, every two years for our senators and our representatives and for our president.
So if we vote on their pay, and I think the American people are very honest people.
If their congressperson is doing a good job, they should have on the ballot, do you think Jeannie Shaheen deserves a pay and increase?
Check yes.
And that's how they would get their increase in pay.
But for them to vote on their pay, that will never happen, that they will not vote not to get a paycheck.
I mean, they are the ones who think they are the kings.
That's what I would think that we should do.
And I thought years ago, and I'm going to say because I'm 78, and I can remember my mother and father, and I might be wrong on this, I'm not sure, but years ago back in the 40s and the 50s, that there was a section where we did vote on their pay.
So I think that we should do that again.
We should be able to vote on our congressman's paychecks.
You might be thinking about the members of Congress voting on their own pay creases, that they have to do that, and that it wouldn't apply for that Congress.
The guy, John, who spoke a little while ago, I think the African-American Marine, he stole my script, but I'll just add a couple things to it.
The reason I am a Democrat is because I do follow Jesus' teachings.
I help the poor my taxes.
I don't mind spending money to help my government pay for people who have not what I have.
John's right.
Seven out of ten people I know have racist tendencies, and I live in a progressive area.
I have watched blacks fall behind me.
I'm a white man.
I have been privileged in this country.
So don't ever think that the white guy, poor, I am so tired of hearing we're being attacked.
The poor white guy gets nothing.
If we're upset, white presidents have been running this country since before Obama.
If we're in a jam, it's because of our own race, not the blacks, not the Hispanics.
And one last thing I want to get somebody else on there.
This Iran thing, Biden and Obama had a thing with them.
This is religious.
We are never going to bomb religion out of someone.
What if someone were to bomb Eric Erickson because he's a Christian?
He's just going to get madder.
We have to learn to talk together.
The first thing is a two-state solution in Israel.
Netanyahu won't go with it, but some Israelis will.
Religion, it might take us a thousand years to sway people to like each other when it comes to religion.
We have just opened a can of beans.
And I'll tell you what, in 10 or 15 years, if you don't think there's going to be an Iranian who's going to remember what we did to him and cause another 9-11, then we are all in a dreamland.
First of all, thank you so much for the programming.
The other night, the ethics hearing, I surfed over there at halftime of a basketball game, and I just found it so interesting that I just stayed with the hearing.
Thank you so much.
The theme of my calls generally is based on some musician I love, maybe Bob Marley, perhaps Charday.
Today it's going to be Carlos Santana, the great guitar player.
And when he says, let's not forget about it, let's not forget about the Epstein files, folks.
And a whole lot of people agree with me that this war and all this nonsense and all the difficulty that's coming out of it is done to protect himself, President Donald Trump, in the name of protecting himself.
And this is based on watching him work.
Let me just say a couple things people need to know, John.
There's a lot of information coming out.
We need reporters to confront President Donald Trump with really good questions.
And I'd like to suggest one.
When Epstein's brother says you were his best friend between 1989 and 2004, was he telling the truth?
And I believe he was.
And Donald Trump says, oh no, in 2002, it was over.
He saw what he was doing with the girls and it was over.
That's a lie.
That's a proven lie.
And there's all kinds of stuff coming out.
Please, reporters, please, reporters, when you get a chance with Donald Trump, please don't let him take everything on the war this, the war that, nonsense he hasn't even decided, nonsense he doesn't even know what he's talking about.
Please confront him with questions about Epstein.
We need the answers and we need to eliminate the cover-up.
Katrina Vandenhoevel joins us now from New York City.
unidentified
She's the publisher and editorial director of The Nation, which describes itself as America's leading source of progressive politics and culture.
Ms. Vandenhoevel, what did yesterday's national no-kings protest, what did it tell us about the state of the progressive movement?
Did it tell us anything about election 2026?
You know, I think John had told us a lot.
It was the largest single-day protest in U.S. history.
Streets from Alaska to Maine, town squares, halls filled.
I think it's now a question of turning that solidarity into political power.
And I looked out at those crowds.
I was monitoring across the country from my laptop, and you could see people come with their different ideas, protests, passions.
But it was almost reminiscent of the kind of the other superpower, the force of opinion, the force of movements, the force of change.
And I took heart from that.
But it is a question now of turning that into political power.
Movements make change, so do elections.
So that was, it was powerful.
I will say that we were pleased that Attorney General Keith Ellison, Attorney General of the state of Minnesota, referred to the nation's nomination of Minneapolis for a Nobel Peace Prize in commitment and in congratulating a city on its solidarity, commitment, conscience, and courage, which one could feel in the crowds yesterday.
I will say it was interesting to see in Washington the weekend was also the weekend of the Conservative Political Action Committee, which has often been a place to highlight Trump or his Trumpians or the MAGA movement.
But it was fractured.
It was demoralized in many ways, unlike the force of in the streets, the people power.
Why do you say it was fractured and demoralized?
How much did you watch of it?
I watched quite a bit on Twitter.
And it didn't take CPAC to reveal that.
I mean, you have, fracturing may be too strong a word, but from the Congress where people in the MAGA movement are dispirited by this idea of sending, not this idea, the actuality of sending forces into battle, which is, you know, kind of, it's a betrayal of what Trump promised, certainly in 2016 when he won three states.
Polls show this, Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, for his opposition to endless war because of the multiple deployments, people coming back maimed from wars in those states.
So I think there was a dispirited entry point into CPAC, but one could see it flare up as some of the big names opposed the decision to send troops and to engage in this war in Iran, which has,
as the national, one of the members of the counterterrorism department, I believe Joe Kemp, said in resigning from the Trump administration that there was no imminent threat from Iran, and then referred to the role of Israel in this war.
So it's an important moment to mark.
And I do think fracturing will emerge if it's not yet there.
I don't know how much stake you put in the straw poll at CPAC, but one of the stories on the straw polling, and the polling was run by John McLaughlin's group, the Republican pollster.
This is the Washington Times story on the polling about the Iran conflict in particular.
When asked about whether they approve of Mr. Trump's decision to use military force in Iran and remove Ayatollah Ali Khomeini, 89% approved of it, 70% strongly approved, and 19% somewhat approved, just 8% disapproved of that.
So fracturing, as I said, is too strong, but it is the case that we're seeing the signs of disagreement with President Trump.
It is not early to see there are growing signs.
Now, some of it is the sort of stars of the MAGA movement.
And that's true that the base still sticks with Trump.
But I'd look out more carefully, as I'm sure you have, at the independent vote polling.
And the opposition to the war is growing each day, partly because the escalation doesn't seem to have a strategy.
And we haven't talked about the big issue, which is the Strait of Hormuz.
And if that keeps, if that remains closed for a month or six weeks, it's a ticking time bomb in this economy, which is much more interdependent than it was at other times of war.
And I think one of the side effects, which is ironic considering the Trump administration's interest in taking on China after putting aside other conflicts, is that this is going to cement China's role as a superpower.
War Escalation Concerns00:14:57
unidentified
So I think there are different layers here.
I think the base is still holding, but certainly congressmen, the Republican congressmen, and women who left Washington in a quick leave are, if not dismayed, deeply concerned about the sending, the escalation of forces into the region.
Some 3,300 rallies across 50 states for No Kings yesterday.
Who's the leader of the Democratic Party right now?
unidentified
So the Democratic Party is a coalition of factions, of wings.
And the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, I would submit, the leader is Bernie Sanders.
And I think you could see that yesterday.
I think his ideas impact people from generation to generation.
And what he's doing now is interesting.
He's coming into the Bronx, this city where I sit, New York City, to speak at a rally this afternoon about the tax issue and the fact that the inequality in this country is not only staggering but dangerous for democracy.
They're probably two through lines that the Nation magazine, in its 165, 160-year history, if you have excess inequality, that 1% control 93% of the country's wealth, or if you engage in battles, wars overseas as a kind of neo-imperialist, that democracy is not sustainable.
And I think people in the streets yesterday, and certainly at the rally today in the Bronx, understand that there has to be a fair way to give people a chance, a fair deal, a new deal, a vision of a common, of a good society.
And we're missing that.
I mean, people are living paycheck to paycheck.
The student debt is out of control.
Healthcare is a mess in this country.
Now, you can't just critique.
You have to have an alternative.
And I would submit that Bernie Sanders, people he's endorsing in both state and local elections around this country, our revolution, Justice Democrats, compose a wing of the Democratic Party.
When you say you can't just critique, you have to have an alternative.
unidentified
Is it your concern that that might be a trap that Democratic candidates may fall into in election 2026 by simply just pointing out I'm not Donald Trump, these are the bad things Donald Trump does, rather than proposing that alternative?
I think 2026 is a moment where you got to win back one of the, I mean, the House or the Senate or both.
And much of that will be a critique of Donald Trump's administration and presidency, and so it should be.
But people also need programs and need to identify what they're for.
And I think that will play out in 26 to 28.
But, you know, there are many Bernie Sanders and the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party is clear about universal health care, not funding new wars, about a tax policy that is about fairness, not vengeance, and about an engagement with the world that believes we make our country a true democracy before we go out into the world preaching to others.
That we redefine security to mean a security of what a radical Franklin Delano Roosevelt described in his 1944 speech, The Economic Bill of Rights, that there's a right to fair housing, a right to a job, a right to health care, health.
And I think that is resonant with a lot of young people.
Not all.
I'm not describing a monolithic overtaking.
I'm simply describing that there are people in this country who have worked for decades on plans, on policies.
And I think it's the moment that you're seeing a populist energy.
And so often, the populist term is used to diminish and demean people like right-wing populism.
There is a multiracial populism available in this country.
And it's seen in New York City with the election of Mayor Mamdani, which was not inevitable.
It seemed impossible.
But he has been a strategic, pragmatic progressive.
Katrina van den Hoovel, our guest this morning on the Washington Journal, taking your phone calls.
Thank you for the opportunity to address the speaker today.
I have one simple comment.
My wife and I attended the No Kings rally yesterday here in Concord in front of the state capitol with our beautiful golden dome.
And I was surprised to see that there were more people of our age group than any other group showing up there today.
I was frankly amused at the jeering and the singing and the chanting and the jiving up and down like a bunch of folks from the 1960s.
While I was in Vietnam, these folks, these kind of folks were running around protesting against the war and trying to save our lives, as military people.
That's what it reminded me of.
As a voter, I always vote for the best politician for the particular job that's being voted for.
And I stay away from the political parties.
That's the reason I'm independent, because each political party seems to be in lockstep with each other, which result can be seen now with the fact that we can't pay a homeland security personnel for doing a very,
very necessary job to protect our borders and to protect us from individuals, from other agencies that are anti-government of the United States.
Well, I just wanted to pick up what you said at the beginning because I think the talents and the possibilities of older people in this country are often diminished.
Bill McKibben, great writer, environmentalist, started a group called the Codgers, or the Great Panthers, sort of like a follow-on to the Great Panthers.
And I do think that this society doesn't value and take advantage of the wealth of talent, of ideas of older community.
I think that what's happening in Congress, you spoke about DHS, is more a measure of administration, Trump holding hostage legislation because he won't pass anything without the SAVE Act, which is essentially a big lie.
The SAVE Act is predicated on the idea that there's voter fraud.
There is almost no voter fraud in this country.
And what it's really about is voter suppression.
I'm not going to elaborate, but I do think this administration is caught up in trying to make fewer people voters, which is un-American.
On the contributions of older people, USA Today with their photo gallery from the No Kings protests.
He's the one that's got the most sense of the whole damn bush.
But now I'm going to point out, do you ever hear the blitz?
See, Hitler tried to bomb England with their B-2s and bombs and everything.
The whole greatest military ever had, tried to whipo England.
England lost, I don't know how many at Dunkirk, but they never did give up.
Old Churchill said they'd fight him in the land and those beaches and everywhere.
And that's what we're into over there in Iran.
I mean, you can't go in and take other people.
There's only been one bomb and stopped the war, and that was the atomic bomb.
And we don't want to.
So, you know, sir, I'm glad to hear your point of view.
I just was going to say that the bombs have killed about 100 children, the first outing of U.S. bombs.
You talk in World War II.
One thing that I find in this country, we don't understand the contribution the Soviet Union made to the war, losing 26 million people.
We're in a moment now where war is normalized.
Militarism is normalized.
We're spending a trillion dollars on our war machine.
Trump has the audacity, the chutzpah, to come to Congress seeking 200 additional billion dollars.
We need a new way of thinking about security.
And with all the references to World War II, we need a new history.
We respect that history, but I disagree with you in how you frame it.
But today, the face of war, if I might add, is changing.
We see it with the drones, the autonomous weapons, the asymmetric kinetic warfare.
And I think we're going to need to take a pause before this AI military revolution engulfs us in ways that will not make us more human or more safe or more secure.
A lot of those advances in drone technology on the battlefield have come since the war in Ukraine.
I've been visiting Russia under the Gorbachev in the Gorbachev years.
I hope there's a ceasefire.
Both countries, Russia, Ukraine, and it was an illegal, aggressive war of aggression by Putin.
But both countries are ravaged, especially Ukraine.
So I hope there's a secure resolution of the ongoing war, which has slipped by the wayside with this new war, that permits Ukraine to live as a sovereign, independent, secure country, but ends the bloodshed that is leading to a third of Ukraine's demography, its citizens, having been either exiled, they've exiled, or been killed in battle.
And Russian is the same.
Now, the irony is at the moment that the war, the Trump-U.S.-Israeli war, is strengthening Russia because of the oil prices.
So this is something to consider in addition to the other real issues with a war that is escalating without any strategy, any plan, and should not have occurred.
To the Tar Hill State, this is Deborah Lee, Black Mountain, North Carolina, Independent.
I would first like to say war is not the answer, period.
I have a comment about Bernie Sanders, but I'd like to say that this criminal and his regime in the White House must be lawfully, peacefully removed, impeached, convicted, and removed.
But what I'm calling about is that, you know, it's my observation that Mr. Trump would never, ever have been in office if the Democrats had not forgone a primary in 2016 and anointed the war-mongering Hillary.
That's my comment.
God bless us, everyone.
Lord, war is not the answer.
Thank you.
Well, war is not the answer.
I think that there's more and more understanding of the futility of war and what security means.
You know, as I said earlier, redefining security will take us a step along.
Talking, I mean, talking 2016, 2020, I'm not sure, but I will say that Trump, two things.
Impeachment, there's been a lot of sort of interest in legalist prosecution politics, prosecutorial politics by liberals, even progressives.
I think the best way to oust Trump is to defeat him at the ballot box and make sure those ballot boxes are secure in every way possible, peacefully, civilly.
But I do think that Trump reflected an anger in this country, as did Bernie Sanders, who did well in the primaries, with the establishment in a country which has felt many people feel they're not heard, that the system is corrupt and corrupted in favor of an establishment that is making out like bandits to this day.
And there are real factors.
Of course, there's racism.
Of course, there's anger, you know, real fury, but I think that establishment anger is not simply producing a Trump, but produces a Biden, a Bernie, who has shown himself to be a real standard-bearer, talking codger.
If Democrats win the House in 2026, do you think it would be a bad idea by them to impeach President Trump?
I think that Jamie Raskin, for example, who would head the Judiciary Committee, if the House goes into Democratic hands, would be wise to hold hearing after hearing on everything from war profiteering to cryptocurrency corruption and not spend as much time on impeachment.
There will be forces, and impeachment may be too subtle a process for this administration, for Donald Trump.
Impeachment vs Corruption00:03:55
unidentified
I think we're not signatories, but the International Criminal Court, the war crimes being committed in this war, and in Gaza, for example, demand inquiry and resolution prosecution.
But I think going back, if the House goes back into Democratic hands, you will see a set of hearings that are important for this democracy and for people.
For example, hearings on drug prices, hearings on mortgages, hearings on student debt, consumer workers' rights, things that are lost in an administration of untrammeled corruption and malign narcissism.
Just wanted to make a comment on some of the things I've heard and seen this morning.
Let me start by mentioning I'm a senior also.
Not quite as of the same age group as a former Vietnam veteran that called in, but certainly well in that group.
I just wanted to speak, excuse me, for the voice.
I just wanted to speak a minute to mention on the No Kings rally and some other issues along those lines.
Those rallies are being supported by people like Roy Singham and other people like the Soros groups.
I'm sure Ms. Vandenhoevel is well aware of that.
The one thing that I would mention to people in this country, even people listening to my voice and others calling in, it's very simple.
Look at the tactics that the Democratic Party has used, opening borders to tens of millions of people, allowing young girls and other people to be terrorized, even murdered in the streets.
I mean, you're being funded and No Kings is being funded by individuals like Singham and Soros that have no use for the American people or care for the American people at all.
You know, I can't speak for George Soros or Roy Singham except to say that they are permitted to spend their money in this country, as are the crypto crowd, the APEC crowd, which has really poured its fortune into many races and dominated in ways that Soros or Roy Singham does not do.
I can simply speak to the attacks on free speech, the attempts to censor people by calling out and lying about murders in the street funded by philanthropists.
George Soros can handle this.
He's been under attack for decades.
Roy Singham, the same.
And I think to go base sort of name-calling is in the tradition of a McCarthyite experience this country had, guilt by association, et cetera.
Take the ideas on their own terms.
The biggest danger this country faces is the influx of crypto, AI, APAC money dominating overwhelming smaller amounts that philanthropy, people power.
I used to believe organized people can beat organized money.
I'm not so sure anymore.
And I think we need a really strategic program.
And you can name names as JD Vance did from the White House after Charlie Kirk was died, was killed.
He called out the nation.
In fact, he called us out as an esteemed publication.
But what he really wanted to do was attack Soros and the Ford Foundation.
He linked them to us, though we had received one tiny grant decades before.
from the Ford Foundation for our intern journalism.
So I think the name-calling, he called us devious forces, et cetera.
The name-calling has to end.
Take things on their own term and their own terms.
How do you see the nation's role in the media environment right now?
Media Consolidation Issues00:07:26
unidentified
Resolutely independent at a time of corporate consolidation, conglomeratization, dumbing down, hyper-politicizing, partisanizing.
We've been around since 1865, July, soon after the end of the Civil War.
We've seen civil wars in this country.
We've seen un-American activities.
But the nation is independent.
It stands for social justice, racial justice, and committed to progressive, left, liberal, conservatives with a conscience, open to all.
I will say on the foreign policy front, we've stood apart from many liberal organizations in our fierce opposition to Iraq and in understanding the power of peace, which has become a subversive term too often in this country.
But resolutely independent and unconventional wisdom since 1865 and of a perch sufficient to have our nomination of Minneapolis for the Nobel Peace Prize taken seriously by the Nobel Secretariat.
Katrina Vandenhoevo, I know you also wrote for years for the editorial page of the Washington Post.
unidentified
I wonder your view of the Washington Post editorial page today and that news organization in particular?
It's interesting.
I began writing in the first sort of, so to speak, term of Bezos, who really did not interfere with the paper at all.
I had more fact-checking from the nation, which I wrote for at the time as well than the Washington Post or questioning.
We published a piece last summer by Pamela Weymouth, the granddaughter of Catherine Graham, who ran the Washington Post, owned the Washington Post for decades.
And she described the debasement of a paper, a dumbing down of a paper.
The editorial page of the Washington Post, which is admittedly, openly devoted to libertarian free market freedom, reads like a bad version, sort of like the New York Post on the Potomac.
So I'm sad to see that because the reporting, much of some of the reporting is still very, very fine, very good in the Washington Post.
The editorial page is sadly laughable in a sense.
It's so New York Post-ish.
When and why do you think things change at the Washington Post from your experience in that first administration of Bezos, as you describe it?
I think Bezos, you know, who knows, but had a midlife crisis of some sort and decided along with his fellow moguls, bros, tech bros, that it was time that he take more control over a property, as he probably saw the Washington Post.
He had acquired for a serious amount of money for Americans, but 250 million.
Think of Jeff Bezos' fortune.
And he wanted to make it more something that he controlled.
And maybe that's part of his life stage, his life.
But he got impatient.
But the other piece of it, forgive me, I didn't give the context.
Bezos is not alone.
The Trump factor cannot be denied in the pressure that Trump exerted, whether openly or not, when the Washington Post decided not to endorse a candidate.
It's right, but something it had done for decades.
You could see the pressure of Trump, which continues.
And the fact that media in this country is often just a small part of a corporate construct, corporation, which needs regulatory licenses, etc., dispensed by the administration in Washington.
So they're vying with a very active president who believes he knows how to publish some of these publications better than the owners, and with an active FCC, Federal Communications Commission.
Would newspapers be better served to just not have an editorial?
unidentified
Well, the most famous lines in journalism are often like, well, I read Playboy for the interviews.
That was decades ago.
But the Wall Street Journal, like find strong reporting, but the editorial page.
I mean, the editorial page during the Clinton years went crazy.
I mean, who killed Vincent Foster?
People will, the Codgers will remember this.
But there is a division, and the New York Times may be the best expression of that, where they have experts on certain topics, transportation, healthcare.
So you have a board of six or eight or ten who write editorials in their areas of expertise after conversations.
The publisher of the paper, the New York Times, will control the edits in different ways.
And it becomes hot and topical in these times.
But you're right that these things are open to rethinking.
I was going to do a seminar on the op-ed page.
The op-ed page was constructed in a very different time than today when everyone has an opinion and 13 platforms to deliver that opinion.
So there are all kinds of things that are being disrupted, institutions being disrupted in some positive ways, but I would submit in the media area right now, because of the pressures of the administration and the cowardice of many in publishing, that it's not a positive disruption.
What do you think the future is for the Washington Post?
unidentified
More and more digital, more and more what Bezos decides he wants to do.
And you know, there's a history in this country, you know this, John, of the Hearst papers, I mean, moguls, call them what you will, oligarchs owning papers.
But I think that the fact that Bezos is truly an Amazon person, that all roads lead to Amazon, and the Washington Post will be engulfed in that digital transformation of a new Amazon.
And the AI structures and the AI impact is going to be ferocious in many places.
So that too will factor into what the Washington Post becomes, unless he sells it, which he might.
You know, at some point along the line, he may say, why do I need this?
I'm not speaking about the nation.
I love the nation, but there are factors that go into editing and publishing a publication that are serious Serious factors.
I saw a sign in C-SPAN's coverage of the No Kings rallies yesterday.
It said, no kings, no fascists, no pedophiles, no billionaires.
unidentified
Is being a billionaire inherently a bad thing?
You know, I don't believe it is.
I mean, I think that it's more reflect, listen, Tom Steyer, who's running for governor of California, is a billionaire.
He has himself talked about being a billionaire in very self-deprecating and more ways.
I think the fact that our system has permitted the expansion of a billionaire class, that there's a systemic problem in our country, as I referred to earlier, that you have 93% of the, and don't hold me to that exact number, but 93% of the assets globally are held by 1%, the 1%.
And the 1% just grows more rich.
The Forbes now is all billionaires.
Thomas Piketty, the French economist who wrote a book on inequality, which made a real splash like 10, 15, 10 years ago, was asked once, what would reduce inequality in our country and across the global spectrum?
Declining Social Mobility00:10:51
unidentified
And he said, a world war or a pandemic.
This was before the pandemic.
Pandemic exacerbated the inequalities.
And no one wants a world war, though we're looking fairly clearly, you know, there's a possibility of anything at this point.
But that's not how you want to reduce inequality.
There are those in the Democratic, Socialist, Democratic Party who say no billionaires.
It's not a good sign for an economy, a society, a culture, a politics.
10 minutes left with Katrina Van den Hoovel this morning and more of your phone calls.
I'm not familiar with your speaker today, but I heard something about 10 minutes ago that hurts my soul when she's talking about Mayor Mamdani as he's a good progressive leader now, but he's not.
He has implemented a different religion into New York City.
I'm a progressive.
I don't care about, I want American progressiveness.
It means that when we elect people, they should include all people, not be against other Americans.
This has been going on, I think, for 20 years where we can't, the people we are electing, it's one against the other.
And then you have speakers that go for one side or the other.
We've got to somehow do a reset where everybody is Americans.
Go ahead, Katrina Vandana.
May I suggest that it's important not to be neutral, that you have ideas which you care about, that you have a passion for something.
I will say about Mayor Mamdani, he is the most inclusive mayor in not in, I mean, he is inclusive.
He's opening to all religions, all races, all ethnicities.
And he has done so far a very good job in knitting together a city that has been under attack by this administration, that has deep ramifying problems.
But he does it with a spirit that is about unifying a city, not polarizing a city.
Now, you can argue that he's being, you know, some say, why is he so friendly with Trump?
He's been to meet Trump twice, and those have been kind of interesting.
Not spectacles.
They've had a purpose, especially the last one where he brought a copy of the Daily News of many years ago, which said New York City dropped dead per Gerald Ford.
But he brought a cover of the New York Post, which said, let's build.
But I think Mayor Mamdani has appointed strategic, pragmatic, expert, competent people into his administration, and he's brought some hope to a politics that has been marked by scandal, cynicism, and turnoff.
And how can you be against a younger generation being moved by someone who sees in government an instrument for change to build a common good, good society?
So I step back and say I disagree with you fervently.
I think Mayor Mamdani has been an inclusive, important, and will be mayor in the history of New York City.
And Ms. Van Dieven-Hevel, you are a light in the dark.
The No Kings rallies have been so good for me and millions of Americans because sometimes you do start feeling like you're all alone thinking that the world's gone crazy around you.
And so my question for you, Ms. Vanden.
Bandon Hoovel.
Bendon Hoovel, excuse me, is number one, why do you think that the No Kings rallies are so satisfying to many Americans that feel isolated and helpless watching the crumbling of our society around us?
And number two, would you elaborate more on why our people, and I love our country, I'm a retired educator.
I have advocated for loyalty and truth and justice to school children for 36 years, not from a political platform, from an American platform.
So why did we elect someone who lied from the get-go?
I love my country too, and I think blaming the people is dead on arrival politics.
I think people took great joy and satisfaction for reasons you understand and I do in being in solidarity with people who may not feel exactly like you but are marching or standing to be heard.
And I think in our society so often people don't feel heard, which is one of the factors why Donald Trump might have been elected in the first place, but it's tougher to see the second, though I see it.
But the larger point is that people do feel like they seek a light in the darkness because we are living in times which make people feel despairing sometimes.
But the alternative despair, alternative to despair is solidarity, and that that's why the no kings and they will continue until they are no longer needed matter.
And that's many people can say demonstrations, rallies don't matter, but they do give someone like you a shot in the arm in a good way.
And this light in the darkness, one of the former nation editors used to say people didn't know of the nation, but when they found it, and do go to thenation.com, it's like a light in the darkness that there are people, a community of people who may not agree on everything, but do agree on social concerns, social justice, economic justice, peace.
What will they find if they go to the nation today?
What are some of the stories you're covering?
unidentified
We're covering the day after the No Kings march and No Kings and where it goes.
We do have people at the nation who are totally gaga when they see, hear, or listen to Bruce Springsteen.
So I think his song will be dissected.
But no, they'll see analytical historical coverage of the Iran war.
They will see coverage of the SAVE Act and why it's not about voter enhancement, but more voter suppression.
And they will see arts and culture.
And as I said, dissection of the No Kings rallies, not just in New York City, but across the board in this great country from Alaska to Maine.
And then there'll be coverage of the rally in the Bronx this afternoon with someone we haven't mentioned but has also been a part of the progressive movement, AOC, who will join Bernie Sanders in the Bronx.
Well, the question is: do you believe that every American man, woman, and child has the ability to achieve unlimited wealth potential?
My comment is, why don't you guys take your No Kings rally across the pond and do it over there?
I would say that the mobility in this country is Larry, forgive me, social mobility has been declining in the last years, which is a terrible testament to the great American promise of all doing what you just said.
And I don't know what that pond is, but I bet it's not.
Anyway, I think it's a very American concept to argue for social justice, economic justice.
And it's not another pond.
It's here that that discussion, that politics, that power to achieve something of enormous importance for millions of people is here.
In terms of House seats, are we talking about what they call a wave election here?
Are we talking dozens of seats?
unidentified
I don't know if it's a wave election, but it's taking back the House and taking it back, I hope, for things that will show the connection between government and the improvement in condition and the condition of people's lives.
And also, to be honest, when you talk international law, people often say you've lost the argument.
But we're witnessing the end of international law, and I think that there will be more discussion about the role of Congress in authorizing or blocking wars.
You know, the war authorization, I believe, has not been used.
Congress has not been, it hasn't been used since World War II.
So we're looking at some changes.
But I take heart of thinking of Jamie Raskin at the helm of the Judiciary Committee.
Katrina Vandenhoe is the editorial director and publisher of The Nation.
Welcome to Ceasefire, where we look to bridge the divide in American politics.
I'm Dasha Burns, Politico White House Bureau Chief, and joining me now on either side of the desk, two guests who have agreed to keep the conversation civil even when they disagree.